Avaaz Appeal for Donations to Fight the Persecution of Gays in Uganda

I got this message from the internet campaigning organisation Avaaz yesterday. I haven’t donated, but I’m putting this up because it describes the horrific persecution of gay and trans people in Uganda and in case anybody else may wish to donate. I’m very much aware that gay people in the west haven’t had it easy, but this is Nazi-level persecution.

‘Dear Avaaz members,

I write from Uganda, where a vicious ‘anti-gay’ law is about to be signed — and we’re being hunted like animals.

Days ago, neighbours castrated a transgender person with a kitchen knife. We couldn’t go to the police as we’d be arrested — and had to search for a friendly doctor, as most wouldn’t help us.

We’re being fired from work, rejected by family, evicted, beaten, raped… and worse.

I’m appealing for your support. Please.

This could be our last call for help. When this law is signed, everything we do, including sending this email and raising funds, will become illegal. But right now, there’s still a narrow window when LGBTQ+ groups can receive support — and your donation could help save lives.

You’d fund safe houses where people can hide, along with emergency medical care, legal support, and trauma counselling. We urgently need more safe houses, as we constantly have to run when angry mobs arrive.

We’re being flooded with frantic calls for help, but without more funds we can only help a tiny fraction of people. I’m heartbroken, and don’t know where else to turn.

And it’s all because of who and how we love. In the face of unimaginable cruelty and violence, please stand up for our right to Love. Donate what you can now:

I’LL DONATE £2

I’LL DONATE £4

I’LL DONATE £7

I’LL DONATE £13

I’LL DONATE £26

OTHER AMOUNT

The new law will effectively make it impossible to exist as a LGBTQ+ person in Uganda.

I could get a life sentence for kissing my partner, and be executed for repeated homosexual ‘offences’. Renting to gay people will become illegal — and I could serve 20 years in jail just for sending this email.

They call us “ungodly” filth, but we aren’t the ones inflicting unimaginable cruelty on already vulnerable people. I know girls who’ve been raped by family members to ‘cure’ their ‘lesbian disease’.

That’s why safe houses are so critically important— providing a place of sanctuary in a country burning with hatred. With your help, we could:

• Fund dozens of new safe houses and emergency shelters across the country;
• Provide emergency health care and legal support for those who’ve been arrested — and meals for people in jail; 
• Help fund the development of a new legal case to challenge the law in court; and
• Power emergency response campaigns, like this one, to defend communities facing discrimination, assault, and war around the world. 

Every penny raised will support LGBTQ+ people in Uganda, and power Avaaz’s emergency response work around the world. By donating, you won’t just be helping in Uganda — you’ll be ensuring this crucial capacity is maintained for others like me, facing unimaginable terror.

Gay, straight, lesbian, transgender — we all just want to live and love in peace. I don’t know when that day will come, but it is not today, and our fight for love must go on. Wherever you are in the world, please stand with us. Donate what you can now:

I’LL DONATE £2

I’LL DONATE £4

I’LL DONATE £7

I’LL DONATE £13

I’LL DONATE £26

OTHER AMOUNT

I’ve been part of the Avaaz community for years. I’ve seen the difference it makes when we come together fast for those in need. Now it’s my community being attacked — me and my people need this movement’s help.

With hope and the deepest of gratitude,

Frank and the whole team at Avaaz

Note: If and when the ‘anti-gay’ law passes, the consequences for an email like this could be deadly — in many ways, they already are. For that reason, we aren’t using Frank’s photo, or their name. 

PS. This might be your first donation to our movement ever. But what a first donation! Did you know that Avaaz relies entirely on small donations from members like you? That’s why we’re fully independent, nimble and effective. Join the over 1 million people who’ve donated to make Avaaz a real force for good in the world.

More information:

• Uganda’s parliament passes mostly unchanged anti-LGBTQ bill (The Guardian)
• Gay Ugandan asks ‘Where will I go?’ as secret shelters under threat (BBC)
• Uganda may impose some of the world’s strictest anti-gay measures: ‘You’re fearing for your life’ (Los Angeles Times’

How Exactly Does Starmer Intend to Reform the NHS?

I’m going to have to do a bit more digging on this, because I think I might be missing something. Yesterday Starmer and Wes Streeting announced that if Labour is elected, they’ll reform the NHS. Starmer has been saying for a very long time that the health service is in an existential crisis and that radical reform is required in order to save it. I think he’s absolutely right about this, especially as Sunak wants even more of it privatised as he deludedly thinks this has worked so well, and former Health Secretary Sajid Javid wants to introduce a £20 charge for people seeing their doctor. I also remember Lord Warner back in the ‘teens suggesting that there should be some kind of additional private insurance scheme or tax or something levied to support the NHS. This was, of course, another step on the road to full privatisation, as was pointed out to Warner. Who subsequently left the Labour party. Starmer also announced that Labour would demand increased efficiency in the NHS with targets set to reduce waiting times. This is all good stuff, but I don’t recall any mention on the mainstream news about how exactly he was going to do all this. It should be done through re-nationalisation and the statements from my local Labour MP, Karin Smyth, certainly suggests that Labour’s committed to a nationalised NHS. But Labour has also said that in the short term they’ll use private healthcare to clear the waiting list. This sounds good, but I have a feeling that the arguments for privatising the NHS the Tories have been using recently included the same statement that they were going to use private healthcare to cut the backlog created by the Covid crisis. New Labour was as committed to privatisation as the Conservatives and went further in the privatisation of the NHS than the Tories had dared. I’m therefore at a loss how Starmer and Streeting plan to reform the NHS so that it again meets the needs of this country’s great working people, and whether it’ll still be nationalised at the end of it, whatever the impression Starmer wants to give about it now.

Private Eye Skewers Mogg’s Hypocrisy over BBC Presenters’ High Salaries

The Murdoch media has been running attack stories against the BBC for a long time focusing on the very high salaries enjoyed by star presenters like Gary Lineker. They’ve been joined by Tory politicians like Jacob Rees Mogg. This fortnight’s Private Eye for 10th May – 1st June 2023 neatly exposes the hypocrisy of Mogg and his gang by revealing the very handsome salaries and fees they get for presenting and appearing on their rancid, toxic programmes on GB News. The article runs

Jacob Rees-Mogg has previously queried the high salaries paid to BBC stars calling its presenters some of “the most well-off in our society” in a diatribe against the licence fee. Of course Rees-Mogg is himself now enjoying a very healthy media salary since he signed up to present a tedious weeknight evening show on GB News this spring, effectively becoming a part-time politician.

The latest register of MPs’ interest shows the ex-leader of the Commons earned just of £32,000 for 40 hours’ work on the show over just a few weeks. That equates to £802 an hour, and makes the already wealthy financier one of the best-paid MPs in terms of outside earnings.

GB News is a cash cow for Tory politicians. The latest register also shows it paid ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng £1,000 for a single interview. In addition, it shells out a £100,000 salary to the party’s deputy chairman Lee Anderson, as well as recently paying around £10,000 each to married Tory MPs Philip Davies and Esther McVey for their pisspoor co-presented weekend offering.

Meanwhile, parts of GB News continue to be a haven for conspiracy theories. Earlier this month, regulator Ofcom again found it in breach of broadcasting rules for an episode of the Mark Steyn programme last year when guest Naomi Wolf said the Covid-19 vaccine amounted to “mass murder”, comparable to the “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”. Executives have been told to go for a meeting with the regulator.

Despite the rap on the knuckles, GB News presenters show no sign of changing their crackpot ways. Last weekend Neil Oliver shared an image online of Bill Gates that featured the Microsoft founder holding vaccine vials while wearing symbols including a swastika and an Illuminati pyramid. Lovely!

While the vast salaries to MPs such as Rees-Mogg who aren’t very good at presenting might seem a waste of money, the political connections at least allow the channel to retain a veneer of respectability.’

Erm, not quite. One Labour MP has said that GB News presents two types of views on its programmes, the right and the far right. The head of Ofcom had an uncomfortable appearance before a Commons committee in which she was asked why the channel was allowed to break the rules against politicians presenting news programmes. One of the most notorious of these breaches was when one Tory MP interviewed Boris Johnson.

The channel was also in Private Eye last fortnight or so when it reported that GB News was in such dire financial straits that it was no longer paying guests appearing on their wretched programmes. Presumably the money saved helps to pay the inflated salaries of rich Tory presenters like Mogg. How very Conservative!

Starmer Now Ready to Ditch ‘Wokeness’?

Okay, there are reports now that Starmer might be ready to ditch another set of policies and attitudes. Yesterday That Preston Journalist reported that Starmer had supposedly told his top team that woke didn’t interest the British public, and condemned the Tory party for supporting it. The Tory Journalist correctly pointed out that this was a bit rich coming from Starmer. The Tories weren’t much better than Labour when it came to these policies, but they had done more to oppose them. And Starmer had still been photographed taking the knee for BLM. The only Labour MP who had stuck up for women against the gender ideology was Rosie Duffield, who had been given no support from her leader and the rest of the party whatsoever. He then quoted Sir John Hayes, a Tory, who said that Labour was totally out of touch with the public on these issues.

In fact, not only has Rosie Duffield received no support for his opposition to the transgender ideology and its detrimental impact on women, but she has been isolated and vilified. Last week Starmer paid a visit to her constituency of Medway in order to boost morale among the Labour activists there. Duffield is the local MP, but was not invited.

I will definitely not be sorry if the Labour party ditches the woke ideologies entirely. I consider them entirely destructive, doing little except to increase grievance and resentment rather than promote real policies to resolve them. Black Lives Matter has become somewhat passe following the revelations about the way Patrice Cullors and the leadership of the parent organisation in America used the donations to enrich themselves and their families, Conservatives have also cited statistics that show that more American cops are killed by Blacks than the other way round, and that more Whites are killed by the police than Blacks. The gender ideology behind the trans rights movement is profoundly dangerous. Apart from its effects in allowing trans identified biological men into women’s spaces, it demands that gender nonconforming young people should only be treated as members of the sex they imitate or identify with, even though this may not be appropriate. It therefore sets them on a path to surgical transition that may severely damage their health and require them to receive additional medical care and support for the rest of their lives. Gender critical gays, like the LGB Alliance, reject the notion that trans rights are merely an extension or continuation of gay rights. Instead, they see them as a continuation of gay conversion therapy, in which society treats gay young people by transitioning them into members of the opposite sex, just as previous medical treatment included castration. But trans activists have denounced the LGB Alliance as a hate group. They were not allowed to attend last year’s Labour party conference while trans activists not only did, but were allowed to speak.

Starmer’s support for wokeness always was conditional. When the BLM protests broke out, he declared that it was ‘a moment’ and it took considerable time for him to be seen showing his support for it. And his remarks now don’t change the fact that he still said that 99.99 per cent of women don’t have a penis, meaning that he thought some do, and his panicked reaction when asked if women have cervixes. His response was that it was a question that shouldn’t be asked. The Journalist says that, whatever he’s said, he still relies on the support of the students and activists who support these policies.

He does, but it looks like he’s prepared to do what he’s done to so many other groups, and ditch them if he thinks they’re a liability. The trans lobby is very loud in its criticism of those who don’t follow their demands, and so if he reneges on his support for them completely, I think he’s going to face some very loud opposition and denunciations from the activists within his party, like LGBT Labour.

My Mistake: Labour Is Against the Anti-Demonstration Legislation After all

Mea culpa! Yesterday I put up a piece reporting that David Lammy had declared that Labour would not repeal Tory legislation, as otherwise the party would spend its time doing nothing else. This raised questions about whether it was worth voting for Starmer’s party in the first place if they weren’t going to repeal deeply unjust and illiberal Tory legislation. Now it seems I may have jumped the gun somewhat. The left-wing vlogger, A Different Bias, has put up a video stating that Lammy may have been somewhat clumsy in the way he answered the question, and that the Labour party certainly does not support the Tories’ anti-protest legislation. He states that Wes Streeting condemned the legislation and supported the anti-monarchy protesters’ right to demonstrate, and denounced their arrests by the Met police. As for repealing legislation, he states that this would indeed take up too much time as the bills were passed from one committee to another. He also argues that while the legislation against demonstrations does contain deeply illiberal curbs on freedom, some of it is still worth keeping. This includes the prohibitions on demonstrations outside abortion clinics. This legislation needs, therefore, to be amended rather than repealed. Furthermore, repealing it would take up too much that could be better spent on measures to grow the economy, stop the health service being run down and improving conditions for ordinary Brits.

I was influenced in my views about Lammy’s comments by Robespierre, who has since declared he made a mistake and issue this video retracting his views.

I hope I have been wrong about this, though many of the commenters on yesterday’s blog post pointed out how authoritarian Labour was, with their plans to introduce national ID cards. The pro-democracy group Open Britain don’t seem to be entirely convinced that Streeting genuinely objects to the Tory legislation. And there is the general problem of credibility. Starmer has broken every promise and pledge he made as leader of the Labour party, and I doubt he’ll change once in government. He may still end up supporting the anti-demonstration laws if he decides it suits his purpose.

But I hope I’m wrong.

Management Consultants Raking in £3,000 a Day from the NHS

One of the great commenters on this blog remarked a little while ago that they had seen or heard something to the effect that although Blair did give increased funding to the health service, much of this disappeared into the pockets of management consultants and administrators rather than actually reaching where it was needed – the medical professional on the front line, for example. The pro-democracy organisation Open Democracy has published a piece reporting that the NHS spends £3,000 per day on private management firms. The piece by Adam Bychawski begins

‘NHS England is paying management consultants day rates of up to £3,000, despite the government claiming it cannot afford to give nurses and junior doctors a real-terms pay rise.

Some executives from top consulting firms including Deloitte and PA Consulting are being paid the equivalent of an annual salary of more than £600,000 by NHS England for their services – more than double what its own CEO is reportedly paid.

Deloitte, which charged the most for its consultants last year at up to £3,000 a day, was ironically hired to help NHS England improve how it keeps track of its spending on private companies.

The findings come after a deal was struck between health unions and the government for a 5% pay rise for more than a million NHS workers. Ministers had dismissed demands for an above-inflation rise on the grounds that it would be unaffordable.

Unite and the Royal College of Nursing rejected the offer, with the former saying that it fell well short of the current rate of inflation. Both are planning to continue with strike action, while the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents junior doctors, is continuing negotiations. The BMA is looking for a 35% pay rise to make up for 15 years of below-inflation pay increases.

Unite’s national lead officer Onay Kasab called the figures “a damning indictment of a government that seems intent on destroying the NHS and has learnt nothing from the pandemic, when it allowed the health service to be plundered by private sector profiteers”. He added: “The money would be much better spent providing a proper pay rise for NHS staff to end the recruitment and retention crisis that is crippling health services.”

The day rates were disclosed to openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request only after the Information Commissioner’s Office warned NHS England that it could be taken to court if it continued delaying its response.

The figures also show consultants from PA Consulting were paid up to £2,500 a day to provide NHS England with support for its Covid vaccination programme between December 2022 and March 2023.

More than a dozen consultants from Ernst and Young were paid up to £2,343 a day last year to give NHS England recommendations for a system that would make it possible to share patient health records electronically between trusts.

The health service also forked out up to £2,350 a day on consultants from KPMG to support improvements to its digital services.

NHS England told openDemocracy that the rates are negotiated centrally by the government.

“It is absolutely appalling to see huge sums of money syphoned off into consultancy firms in this manner,” Julia Patterson, chief executive of NHS campaign group EveryDoctor, told openDemocracy. “At the very least, there should be published reports annually demonstrating the added value provided by contracting strategic advice.

“Local healthcare experts – such as the NHS clinicians, who are woefully underpaid – would be much better placed to offer advice about the planning and processes within their respective areas.”

The sums raise questions about whether the government has learnt from its disastrous NHS Test and Trace scheme, which was criticised for relying too heavily on private sector consultants. Deloitte staff were paid up to £6,000 a day to work on the programme despite an inquiry later finding that it failed to slow the pandemic.’

For further information see: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/nhs-england-consultants-deloitte-kpmg-pa-consulting-ernst-young/

Get the privatisers and profiteers out of the NHS, and the Tories out of government.

Will Starmer Protect the NHS from Privatisation by Sunak? Local MP Karin Smyth Responds

A week or so ago I wrote to Karin Smyth, the local MP for south Bristol, at the behest of one of the internet petitioning organisation. Rishi Sunak had stated that he intends to privatise more of the health service, as privatisation has worked so well. Which shows how ideologically deluded and completely removed from anything resembling reality he and the other Thatcherite privatisation maniacs are. The petitioning organisation asked its supporters to write to their MPs requesting them to block this. If your MP was Labour, then you were urged to ask them to write to them asking them to write to Starmer and request him to oppose the privatisation. Or say if he would oppose it. I got this response yesterday from Karin Smyth:

‘Dear David -,

Thank you for contacting me to raise concerns about NHS privatisation.

I know that many people are rightly concerned at the very serious pressures facing our NHS. Our health service is struggling and performance against many waiting time measures is at a record low: patients are waiting hours for ambulances to arrive, A&E departments are overstretched, and more than seven million people are waiting for treatment.

Ministers point to the impact of COVID-19. But we entered the pandemic with record NHS waiting lists and 100,000 staff vacancies.
We must build capacity in the NHS so that all patients who need it can be treated on time again. But I believe we have a responsibility in the short term to utilise spare capacity in the private sector to get through the current crisis and bring down NHS waiting lists. Nobody should be left languishing in serious pain, while those who can afford to, pay to go private. That is the two-tier healthcare system that I and my colleagues want to end.

In the long term, I want the NHS to be so good that people never have to go private.

Building an NHS fit for the future is one of Labour’s five key missions for government, reforming health and care services to speed up treatment, shift the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community, and reduce health inequalities.

Paid for by ending the non-dom tax status regime, the plan will double the number of medical school places, create 10,000 extra nursing and midwifery clinical placements a year, train double the number of district nurses each year, and deliver 5,000 more health visitors.

Thank you once again for contacting me about this issue.

Yours sincerely,

Karin Smyth MP
Labour MP for Bristol South’

I thank her for her response and am convinced that she is sincere in her belief in the NHS and defence of it. But I don’t trust Starmer. Not after he’s broken every promise he’s ever made. I also remember how Blair constantly accused the Tories of priatising the NHS – rightly – but then went much further than them when he came to power. So much so that the Tories under Cameron pretended to be further left and opposed the hospital closures of Blair’s regime. Of course, that lasted right up until Cameron got his public school arse through the door of No. 10.

As a member of the Labour party, I hope Labour supporters will continue to vote Labour in the local elections today and we can get the Tories out, because they will make things worse if they’re returned to power. But I remain unconvinced that Starmer will be significantly better.

38 Degrees Petition Against Racial Inequalities in Maternity Care for Black and Asian Women

I got this petition today from 38 Degrees, and have absolutely no problem signing it. I think generally this country has one of the worst rates of infant mortality for a developed country, and it is clearly iniquitous that Black and Asian women should be especially in danger of death in childbirth. I’m putting it up because I hope other people will also sign it as well.

‘Content warning: this email makes reference to maternal morbidity in childbirth.

“Appalling” and “glaring” – that’s the verdict from MPs on the Government’s failure to address racial inequalities in maternal health.

David, did you know that Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth, while maternal mortality is twice as high among Asian women? [1] The Women and Equalities Select Committee have labelled the Government’s inaction on maternal health as “frankly shameful” and “short of acceptable standards”. [2]

They, and campaigners, are calling on Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch to set a target for fixing inequalities in maternal health – tackling this scandal once and for all, and giving all mothers the care they deserve.

David, MPs are finally sitting up and taking notice of this, and it’s been splashed across the media. [3]But it’s going to take more than that for Kemi Badenoch to act. What’s missing is a huge backlash from thousands of us. If tens of thousands of us all add our names to a giant petition, we can send a clear message to the Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch: We won’t accept a lack of action once again!

So, David, will you add your name to the petition and hold Kemi Badenoch to account on maternal health inequalities? It only takes 30 seconds to sign.

YES, I’LL SIGN

I’M NOT SIGNING BECAUSE …

The MPs who produced this report are calling for more ambitious targets, more education for maternity staff on disparities, and an increase to maternity services budgets. It’s the kind of overhaul to maternal health that will be vital if things are going to change for good. [4]

38 Degrees supporters come from different backgrounds. But we know that we’re at our most powerful when we act together – and we can make a difference when we join our voices as one. From keeping prescriptions free for over 60s to stopping Channel 4 privatisation, together we can win. [5]

So, David, will you add your name to the petition and hold Kemi Badenoch to account on maternal health inequalities? It only takes 30 seconds to sign.

YES, I’LL SIGN

I’M NOT SIGNING BECAUSE …

Thank you for being involved,

Amoke, Jonathan, Veronica and the 38 Degrees team’

38 Degrees’ Analysis of the Government’s White Paper on Gambling

The internet petitioning organisation 38 degrees are running a campaign for the greater regulation of the gambling industry. Yesterday I got a message from them that they’d acquired the government’s White Paper on it, and gave their analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.

‘Hello supporter,

Thanks in no small part to the pressure you all put on the government, yesterday we finally saw the white paper of the Gambling Act review. The full document is here.

Thank you so much for all your efforts, for signing the petition, Tweeting to government and to the many who sent personal messages to the DCMS Secretary of State Lucy Frazer. 

There were some positives in it, including proposed affordability checks, reductions in stake sizes for the highly addictive slot machines, and a statutory levy on industry profits to pay for independent education, treatment, and research. They also promised a review of incentives such as free bets and bonuses – something I’ve personally campaigned on – which I hope could be the beginning of the end for them.

But there was much missing, including allowing the relentless gambling advertising to continue, something that almost everyone is fed up of.

And almost all proposals will need further consultation which will mean more delay.

Every day of delay means more lives lost, more families devastated like mine was, so we can’t sit back and let the gambling industry keep delaying reform.

The fight will very much continue – this is just the start.

It’s time to take stock now but I’ll be back in touch soon about any new campaign and petition.

Thank you again, we’ve got this far, we’ve shown together we can force change upon a powerful industry, and we can go much further.

Very best wishes,

Annie Ashton’

I’ve got a particular interest in this, as I believe the deregulation of the gambling industry a few years’ ago has done immense damage and led people into addiction, poverty and despair. I also recall that Blair during his reign wanted to set up gambling supercasinos in place like Blackpool. This was to become a British Las Vegas, along with a number of other places. Fortunately it didn’t happen. But I am concerned by a video I caught sight of the other day about Starmer getting donations from the gambling industry.

38 Degrees Petition Demanding the Evacuation of NHS Doctors Without UK Passports from Sudan

Dear David,

Hundreds of civilians have been killed on the streets of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, as rival military factions fight for control. [1] As the violence escalates, hundreds of people have been evacuated by the UK to safety but many more still remain. [2]

This includes at least 74 NHS doctors who are being turned away from evacuation flights, despite having a UK Visa, because only UK passport holders are being let on board. [3] NHS doctors are being told to “make their own way” to the UK. [4] And there are many more people in Sudan who currently live and work in the UK that are also being denied.

This treatment is leaving these doctors feeling “betrayed” by the country they have given so much to – especially during the pandemic. [5] And with things moving so fast on the ground in Sudan right now – we have to act NOW to get these people to safety.

So David, if you think those with UK Visas who live and work in this country should be evacuated from Sudan, can you sign the petition today? For every 1000 signatures, we’ll send an email to the Foreign Office letting them know how many people are demanding they do the right thing. It will only take a few seconds:

SIGN THE PETITION

Thanks for all you do,

David, Megan and the 38 Degrees team

NOTES:

[1] The Independent: What is happening in Sudan and why? The war and conflict explained
[2] The Guardian: UK says nearly 900 evacuated from Sudan amid hopes of further flights
[3] ITV: British residents in Sudan, including NHS doctors, ‘will not be evacuated by UK’
BBC News: Sudanese NHS doctor ‘betrayed’ after being refused entry onto evacuation flight to UK
[4] See note 3
[5] See note 3′

I’ve signed the petition, because I think it is absolutely disgraceful that valued and needed NHS doctors, who have valid visas but not passports, should be abandoned to fend for themselves in the fighting. If you feel the same way I do, please sign it as well.