India Cutting Evolution and Other important Scientific and Political Subjects from the Curriculum

‘The prestigious science journal, Nature, reported on 31st May 2023, that the Indian education authority is dropping several key scientific and political subjects from the education curriculum for pupils under 16. the magazine reported:

In India, children under 16 returning to school this month at the start of the school year will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements or sources of energy.

The news that evolution would be cut from the curriculum for students aged 15–16 was widely reported last month, when thousands of people signed a petition in protest. But official guidance has revealed that a chapter on the periodic table will be cut, too, along with other foundational topics such as sources of energy and environmental sustainability. Younger learners will no longer be taught certain pollution- and climate-related topics, and there are cuts to biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics subjects for older school students.

Overall, the changes affect some 134 million 11–18-year-olds in India’s schools. The extent of what has changed became clearer last month when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the public body that develops the Indian school curriculum and textbooks — released textbooks for the new academic year that started in May.

Researchers, including those who study science education, are shocked. “Anybody who’s trying to teach biology without dealing with evolution is not teaching biology as we currently understand it,” says Jonathan Osborne, a science-education researcher at Stanford University in California. “It’s that fundamental to biology.” The periodic table explains how life’s building blocks combine to generate substances with vastly different properties, he adds, and “is one of the great intellectual achievements of chemists”.

Mythili Ramchand, a science-teacher trainer at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, says that “everything related to water, air pollution, resource management has been removed. “I don’t see how conservation of water, and air [pollution], is not relevant for us. It’s all the more so currently,” she adds. A chapter on different sources of energy — from fossil fuels to renewables — has also been removed. “That’s a bit strange, quite honestly, given the relevance in today’s world,” says Osborne.’

Some material was cut from the curriculum last year in order to lighten it during the Covid pandemic. It was expected that it would be reinstated once the pandemic and the lockdown was over, but this hasn’t happened. Academics and educationalists appear perplexed by the decision, but it looks like it comes from the RSSS, the militant Hindu nationalist organisation linked to Modi’s BJP.

[Amitabh] Joshi says that the curriculum revision process has lacked transparency. But in the case of evolution, “more religious groups in India are beginning to take anti-evolution stances”, he says. Some members of the public also think that evolution lacks relevance outside academic institutions.

Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, says that changes to the curriculum are being driven by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a mass-membership volunteer organization that has close ties to India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. The RSS feels that Hinduism is under threat from India’s other religions and cultures.

“There is a movement away from rational thinking, against the enlightenment and Western ideas” in India, adds Sucheta Mahajan, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University who collaborates with Mukherjee on studies of RSS influence on school texts. Evolution conflicts with creation stories, adds Mukherjee. History is the main target, but “science is one of the victims”, she adds.’

See: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

One of the other subjects cut from science teaching is a section ‘Why We Fall Ill’, which seems to me to be particularly wicked and dangerous. Everyone really needs to know about the causes of disease, regardless of their level of education or the country in which they live. This removal threatens to increase the incidence of disease in a country where many people lack access to medicine.

In an article from the previous day, 30 May, Nature reported the Indian education authority’s, NCERT’s, reasons for the changes

‘NCERT says that ‘rationalization’ is needed when content overlaps with material covered elsewhere in the curriculum, or when it considers content to be irrelevant. Moreover, India’s 2020 National Education Policy says that students need to become problem-solvers and critical thinkers, and it therefore advocates less memorization of content and more active learning.

NCERT also wants “a rootedness and pride in India, and its rich, diverse, ancient and modern culture and knowledge systems and traditions”. Some people interpret this as a motivation to remove the likes of Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, and instead use the time to learn more about India’s precolonial history of science.’

But it comments

‘India is not the only postcolonial country grappling with the question of how to honour and recognize older or Indigenous forms of knowledge in its school curricula. New Zealand is trialling the teaching of Māori ‘ways of knowing’ — mātauranga Māori — in a selection of schools across the country. But it is not removing important scientific content to accommodate the new material, and for good reason.’

See: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01750-2

It all reminds me of the furore back in the 1990s when Christian Creationists in Kansas banned evolution from being taught in their schools. The great comedian, the late Bill Hicks joked about it, saying ‘In many parts of our troubled world, people are crying ‘Revolution! Revolution’. In Kansas they’re shouting ‘Evolution! Evolution! We want our opposable thumbs’. There have been periodic concerns ever since about the teaching of evolution and Creationism in schools. Western scientists have been particularly worried about Creationism, or Creation Science, being taught as scientific fact. There was particularly controversy nearly two decades ago with the emergence of Intelligent Design, and the Discovery Institute. Intelligent Design accepts evolution, but considers that it has carried out by a God or other intelligent force that has actively intervened at specific points. One form of Intelligent Design, proposed by the cosmologist Fred Hoyle in his 1980s book, Evolution from Space, is that the creator may have been an extradimensional computer civilisation. For years discussions of Creationism and its supposed threat to science was chiefly confined to Christianity. There was some discussion of the rise of Islamic Creationism in Turkey, but from what I recall this was mostly confined to the internet. India at that time seemed not to be experiencing any similar concerns about evolution or other doctrines which may have challenged traditional religious teaching.

This looks very much like it’s going to damage India as an emerging global economic and technological force. Yes, the country has a millennia-old tradition of scientific and medical innovation, but the country has become a scientific powerhouse as well through embracing modern, western science, just as its neighbour China has done. I’ve been particularly struck by the country’s ambitious space programme, which has made some remarkable advances and has made India a space power. If these changes to its schools curriculum continue, I can see the tradition of scientific excellence that the country has done so much to build being severely handicapped.

I also note the similarity of its stance on the environment to various right-wing political lobby groups and think tanks to ban the teaching of environmentalism and climate change, and to make us all believe that the massive pollution of the environment by business isn’t happening and won’t cause permanent damage. Trump when he was in the White House passed legislation preventing the American environmental watchdog from publishing anything about climate change of the environment. This partly came from oil industry, whose own, astroturf climate organisations has a policy of buying up independent climate analysis laboratories and using them to turn out its own, anti-climate change propaganda.

Regarding the excision of material on politics, I’ve got the impression that India is trying to establish itself as the true home of democracy, looking back to its traditional village councils or panchayats. But there seems to be a more sinister purpose to the removal of chapters on democracy and diversity; political parties; and challenges to democracy, as well as a chapter on the industrial revolution for older students. It looks here like the BJP and its storm troopers are trying to stop India’s young people from acquiring the historical and political knowledge to understand how their country could be – or actually is – being taken towards authoritarianism and Fascism.

Vicious totalitarian governments of both left and right, from Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s Russia, have all attacked and refashioned science, history and education as part of their programmes. Now it seems India, under the BJP, is also going down this path.

Not On the Internet Due to Aftereffects of Covid Vaccine

In case you’re wondering where I’ve been for the past couple of days, I’ve been recovering from the Covid booster jab I had on Saturday. I’m glad to have the vaccine, as the chemo treatment I’ve had for the myeloma has weakened my immune system. And it was a great day with the sun shining. But yesterday I felt very fluey and have been extremely weak today. Hopefully I’ll be a lot better tomorrow, when I’ll start putting some pieces up.

Best wishes to everyone else, who’s taking the jab and to all with ill health out there.

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.

Tories Demanding Khan Sack Black Culture Advisor for ‘Hateful’ Tweets – But Everything She Says Is Right!

GB News and the Depress have reported that London mayor Sadiq Khan is facing calls to sack his advisor on Black culture, Kemi Olivia Alemoru. Alemoru’s the former editor of Gal-Dem, and now folded magazine for women and non-binary people of colour. So what were these terribly tweets that she made that have caused such offence? Well, she called Johnson ‘the Grim Reaper’ and wondered why he hadn’t been attacked as others had got a slap for less. She also called the Tory government ‘murderers’ and said “They have stood by idly and let people’s families die taking too much time to make decisions that could save lives, using money to make their friends rich rather than make our pandemic infrastructure robust or useful.” The GB News article about this quotes a Conservative member of the London Assembly, Neil Garratt, as saying “It is quite wrong for Sadiq Khan to appoint someone with extreme and hateful views to a role meant to bring Londoners together”.

Really? ‘Cause I don’t see anything factually incorrect in what she has said. Johnson dithered about imposing the Covid lockdown, listening to stupid eugenicist wibblings about herd immunity instead of what real epidemiologists were telling him. As a result, people caught Covid and died. On other issues, Johnson showed himself far less interested in the actual business of government and more in publicity shots and campaigning. He seemed to be going off to Checkers every weekend during the Covid crisis. And unlike other PMs during national emergencies, he never attended the COBRA meeting about it.

But why stop with Covid? The work capability tests and benefit sanctions have led to untold deaths of the disabled and unemployed, who were thrown off benefits for trivial or utterly fabricated reasons. I remember that c. 2015 people were putting up on their blogs faces of the hundreds who had died, some of them in appalling deprivation and hunger. This included a mentally ill young Black man, who I think had been unable to get himself the insulin he needed for his diabetes. There was also a case of a young woman, who committed suicide with her baby, out of despair after she had her benefit cut off, and an elderly couple who starved to death. As for that vaunted privatisation, that Sunak thinks has done so much for the NHS, a study found that instead it had caused 350+ unnecessary deaths. Quite apart from the chaos caused by massive funding cuts, that left us unable to cope with the pandemic unlike our continental cousins. And Black Brits have been particularly hit by the Tories’ wretched austerity, so Alemoru has undoubtedly seen the greater harm Tories policies have had on the Black community. I despise Critical Race Theory, but Alemoru has a particular right to be angry as a woman of colour.

But could there be anything else that riles the Tories? Well, yes. She’s an admirer of Jeremy Corbyn. She’s supposed to have tweets: A vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, who is rumoured to be pondering throwing his hat in the ring for the London mayor role, Alemoru once tweeted at 1am in November 2019: “I love Corbyn so much”, followed by a post in April 2020 that read: “CORBYN CAN NEVER GO HE LIVES IN MA HEART”. She isn’t alone. Corbyn is an inspiring speaker and people wanted and supported his socialist political agenda. Which is why he was smeared as a Commie, Trotskyite and anti-Semite, and his supporters purged from the Labour party.

And she also committed the heinous sin of dissing Keir Starmer, calling him a scab.

GB News states that she tweeted ‘No one can tell me that @Keir Starmer is not a Tory plant. He’s too s*** to be trying! He’s not trying to be anything to anyone for any reason. I wish he broke the law with that curry.”

She later referred to Starmer as a “SCAB” for sacking Labour MP Sam Tarry from the Shadow Cabinet for joining a strike picket line.’

I’ve thought exactly the same thing about Starmer. He and the Blairites are Thatcherite infiltrators. Various right-wing members of the NEC were on Conservative forums. One of them was even more vitriolic about Corbyn and the left than the Tories. And yes, I do question his support for the strikers. I’ve heard various explanations that, of course the Labour front bench supports the pickets and Sam Tarry shouldn’t have joined the line for various reasons. But Tarry’s sacking still looks like the actions of a Tory scab trying to ingratiate himself with the right.

Back to her comments about killing Johnson, she made it clear that she wasn’t calling for anyone to do it, just wondering why they hadn’t. So she was inciting people to commit a crime, merely expressing an opinion about our massively incompetent, corrupt and egotistical PM.

My verdict on the matter is:

Kemi Olivia Alemoru is right and should stay.

For further information, see:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/sadiq-khan-s-black-culture-advisor-sent-vulgar-tweets-called-tories-murderers-and-starmer-a-scab/ar-AA1aq5fM?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=7c0bf538585d4bac9c7947c23fb3550b&ei=22

When reading, remember that GB News is effectively becoming a mouthpiece of the Tory party. It now employs a number of Tory MPs as presenters, including Jacob Reet Snob, as well as Nigel Farage, former UKIP caudillo. I think I’ve also heard rumours that they want to give a post as presenter to Anne Widdecombe and Liz Truss.

When it comes to GB News, the remarks of a Labour MP while grilling the head of Ofcom is right: they offer a choice of opinions – right or far right.’

Clown Planet on New York’s Police Robots

Clown Planet is a YouTuber who puts up short videos about the weird, bizarre and stupid happening around the world. I think he’s a man of the right, as much of his content is about some of the daft, nonsensical and dangerous stuff uttered or done by the extreme gay rights and trans crowd. In this video, however, he covers the reintroduction by the NYPD of their Digidog and K5 robots. The Digidog is a version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dog, equipped with an artificial arm. It was first put on the streets by New York’s finest two years ago, but was subsequently taken off following complaints that it represented a science fictional, aggressive style of policing. As you can hear from the audio in one of the excerpts, the cops state that it will only be used for situations like terrorism and hostage negotiations,

The K5 robot looks to me like a giant pepper pot, a bit like a Dalek shorn of gun, sink plunger and eyestalk. This machine is intended to police the subway and Times Square.

This is getting close to some of the dystopias in science fiction in which machines patrol the streets keeping criminals and the general public in their police. One of the first SF stories about the dangers of this kind of mechanised policing was Ray Bradbury’s The Pedestrian. This was a short tale about a man stopped and arrested by a robot police car, which judges him suspicious simply for going for a walk. With these machines now patrolling New York, this is starting to look more than a little prescient. The video is bookended with Alex Jones looking amazed and horrified. Which he may well be, as this is precisely the kind of SF scenario he kept banging on about. When he wasn’t ranting about ‘the globalists’, Barack Obama planning to incarcerate everyone in emergency camps and declaring himself totalitarian overlord of the US, Hillary Clinton being an alien, or a cyborg, or possessed by demons, and stupid and dangerous nonsense about the Democrats operating a child abuse ring out of a Boston pizza parlour.

At present I don’t think these robots present a serious threat to humanity. Their own intelligence and autonomy is very limited, and it doesn’t look as if there’s going to be many of them hitting New York’s streets. So at the moment it’s still going to be human police officers keeping citizens safe from the bad guys.

The situation in China, on the other hand, may be very different. A year or so I found another video on YouTube showing what the Covid lockdown was like there. It was very restrictive over here, but this video showed drones flying through the sky and one of the Spot robots patrolling the ground making sure that everyone kept to their apartments. A very chilling, totalitarian sight, from a state that is using facial recognition technology to track and monitor its dissidents.

I think we’ll have to watch this very carefully. At present it’s a harmless gimmick, but if American politics becomes authoritarian, it’ll easily become something much more sinister.

Megaphone Petition Against the Raising of the Pension Age to 68

Hey David,

Unite the Union have launched a new campaign on Megaphone: Don’t raise the state pension age: 68 is too late! Below is a message from Caren Evans, Unite’s National Officer for Retired Members. Sign the petition today.

The government recently indicated it may raise the state pension age for millions of workers aged 44 to 52. Fearing massive defeat in the next general election, it now looks like the government may abandon these plans – for now.

Meanwhile, governments in other countries are facing huge rebellions over plans to raise the retirement age.

We must make it clear that any UK government that attempts this will also face massive opposition, now and in the future.

That’s why Unite the Union, together with the National Pensioners Convention, is launching the 68 is too late campaign.

Add your name to grow the campaign

We will not allow our State Pension to be raided to pay for politicians’ bad choices.

New research by Unite shows that the profits of the UK’s largest companies are now 89 per cent higher than before the pandemic, but workers are not seeing our fair share. Our life expectancy is no longer rising, our NHS has been cut to the bone, our work doesn’t pay, and our workplace pensions have been raided.

Workers create the wealth in this society, and we demand a share of that wealth.  We deserve dignity, respect and financial security in our old age. 

In solidarity, 

Lois,

Megaphone UK

I’ve signed it, because the government is pushing the pensionable age back to what it was when it was first introduced: 70. Along with all the other workers’ rights they can roll back to leave people in poverty and despair, while further stuffing the pockets of the corporate profiteers who fund them.

Public Satisfaction with NHS at Lowest Ever

I’m sure you’ve also seen this on the news. According to a new poll, public satisfaction with the NHS is at is lowest since people started being survey about it in the 1980s. The Tories must be delighted, as this is all very much engineered. Despite all the lies that they prize the NHS and that it’s in safe hands, they’ve been aching to privatise it since the Maggie Thatcher. So budgets have been cut, leading to the shortage of beds that proved disastrous during the Covid epidemic. Services have been privatised and outsourced, with the private healthcare companies also imposing cuts in order to keep profits up for their shareholders. Grotty Tory politicos have already started to demand outright privatisation and the levying of charges, despite the fact that the latter violates the fundamental ethos of the NHS that it should be free at the point of use. And I’ve no doubt that their mouthpieces in the media will get more outspoken in their demands for its privatisation. GB News’ Nana Akua has already posted any number of videos on YouTube demanding it, or something very like it.

What the Tories won’t like is that the public still support it. This is a major problem for those demanding it be sold off to private enterprise. You can find them online complaining about the public’s continued support and discussing ways that it should be broken. Labour should be out defending it, and I’m sure some Labour MPs are sincere when they say they will. But not Starmer. He’s a Blairite, and Blair did more to privatise the NHS than the Tories had dared. Moreover, Starmer has surrounded himself with American private healthcare firms as his advisors. When somebody asked him about it, he’s supposed to have snapped that he didn’t answer questions about his advisors. Which is a blatant dodge, if ever there was one.

I hope Labour does get in, because another bout of Tory government will destroy this country. But if they do, I definitely want Starmer held to account and continually pressured to retain and expand the NHS. With no lies or evasions countenanced.

38 Degrees Petition Against Pharmacy Closures

Here’s another part of the Tory engineered crisis hitting the NHS, and probably one you may not have heard of. I got this email petition today from 38 Degrees on behalf of a new campaign group, Save Our Pharmacies, against the mass closure of NHS pharmacy services. Lloyd’s have put something like 1,300 of their chemists up for sale or closure. One of the pharmacies near me is due to be sold to an independent rival. I’ve also heard tales of terrible service about some of the other local pharmacies. In one incident, people queuing for their medicines were left without them when the pharmacy closed because the pharmacist was due to go to another chemists’. The impression I’ve got is that they’re short of staff, and this is having a disastrous effect on customer service. And then the government increases the pressure by telling everyone to see them instead of going to the doctor. This is why I’ve had no hesitation in signing this petition. I hope you will do so too.

‘Dear David,

Your local pharmacy could be on the brink of collapse if the Government doesn’t announce more funding. [1] The closure of pharmacies could mean you and your family not being able to get the treatment or medication you desperately need.

Since 2015, funding has been cut by 30% and hundreds of pharmacies that play a huge and vital role in our communities have closed their doors for the final time. [2] This simply cannot continue.

That’s why the Save Our Pharmacies campaign group have started a petition calling on the Health Secretary to safeguard NHS pharmacy services and ensure local pharmacies have a future. [3] The petition has already been signed by thousands of people and continues to grow.

So, David, if you want to make sure your local pharmacy can keep its doors open, sign the petition now, and send a clear message to the Health Secretary: save our pharmacies!

YES, I’LL SIGN!

Campaign created by Save Our Pharmacies campaign group

Sign the petition

To: The Health Secretary and NHS England

What: Please provide immediate, fair and sustained funding, to safeguard NHS pharmacy services and ensure local pharmacies have a future.

Why is this important: Our local NHS pharmacies are on the brink of collapse, despite having proven during the pandemic that they are more needed now than ever. Since 2015, their funding has been cut by 30% and 720 pharmacies have permanently closed, putting vital NHS services at risk. Without fair funding from the Government, many more pharmacies will be forced to close. Something the government can do straight away is to fund a ‘Pharmacy First’ Service in England so people with minor illnesses can be treated on the NHS by their local pharmacy, instead of having to wait to see a GP for a prescription. Community pharmacies provide vital health and social care in communities across the country, including the most deprived neighbourhoods. Please back our local pharmacies – so they can continue to keep people well and save lives Read more… Sign the petition

Thank you for being involved,

David, Megan and the 38 Degrees team

NOTES:
[1] Sky News: Hundreds of community pharmacies ‘could close due to rising costs’
[2] See note 1
[3] Save our Pharmacies
38 Degrees: Save our pharmacies – protect vital NHS services‘

Metro Mayor Dan Norris’ Reply to My Letter for 38 Degrees on Bus Franchising

As well as getting people to upload videos about their experiences with terrible buses in the area, 38 Degrees also encouraged them to write to their local authorities. I did so, and received this kind reply from the Labour party West of England metro mayor, Dan Norris. Norris explains that they are already considering the franchise system, but this on its own is only part of the solution. The services also need much more funding.

‘Dear David,

Thank you for your email asking the councils in the Combined Authority to discuss introducing bus franchising into the region. I have a great deal of sympathy with what people are saying in the videos the campaign is sending me every day.

People rely on buses to get to work, school, social events and for shopping, and the bus service is not working as well as it needs to. I completely understand that. You are asking for the idea of franchising to be on the table at the next West of England Combined Authority meeting on March 17th. I have said publicly quite clearly that franchising is already on the table and remains under ongoing review. But it’s not a silver bullet, nor is it public ownership.

Franchising campaigners refer to other Combined Authorities like Greater Manchester, which has franchising but also has a tram system which offsets some of the more immediate problems that their bus services are facing. They too are experiencing an acute bus driver shortage, reduced passenger use post-Covid and increased costs of running the services. I am watching closely to see how my good friend and colleague Andy Burnham is addressing these issues in his region. But you will also no doubt have heard recent news reports that the situation with bus services is a nationwide one.

Less money has been invested in West of England bus services than elsewhere. It works out at £20 per head here but £36 in Manchester and £63 in Liverpool.

I am enormously proud to have secured the highest amount of cash nationwide – half a billion – for transport services more widely. I have repeatedly been told by Government that that funding can not be spent shoring up existing services, though, but must be spent on new ideas.

We need innovative thinking to look at the problem and I am confident that between us we can work towards providing the kind of bus service the region needs and deserves.

I understand the goal of your campaign and will continue to consider franchising along with all other suggestions that come forward, because franchising itself would take years to put in place and we need solutions now. Once again thank you for contacting me,

Yours sincerely,

Dan Norris
Metro Mayor for the West of England

I don’t know what kind of innovative thinking is required, nor how this can improve services. It looks to me that the government’s strings against using it to shore up existing services prevents their improvement and will prevent the creation of new bus routes. At the same time, it seems that any support for bus franchising or nationalisation is quite tepid. But hopefully I’m wrong and something can be done about this.

38 Degrees Petition for Release of Report into Reforming the Gambling Industry

This is another petition from the internet democracy organisation I’ve got absolutely no problem signing. People are succumbing to addiction and suicide because of the industry. And I also remember how, back during Blair’s tenure of No. 10, there were briefly plans for gambling megacentres. One of them was going to be Blackpool, which was going to be Britain’s Las Vegas. These were mercifully dropped. Nevertheless, television and the internet are saturated with adverts for online gambling, there have been concerns about a specific type of one-armed bandit or something like it in betting shops and documentaries about the toll gambling addiction has taken in broken lives.

Content warning: this email contains mentions of suicide and addiction.

Dear David,

Four years. Five different ministers. And an estimated 1,600 deaths. [1] That’s how long it’s been since the Government announced they’d be drawing up plans to reform the gambling industry and make it safer. But delay after delay has stopped those plans being published – and with every delay comes real danger. [2]

But during these years of waiting Annie, who lost her husband to gambling related suicide, has worked tirelessly to ensure the Government publishes these plans. [3] They’re long overdue. In fact, the rules regulating the gambling industry haven’t been properly updated since before the smartphone was invented. [4]

There’s rumours that the report could finally be released early next month, but we’ve heard that before. This time, Annie is determined to make sure it happens. So she’s travelling to 10 Downing Street to hand in her petition calling on the Government to finally set out the action it’ll take to protect people affected by gambling.

Over 83,000 of us have already signed Annie’s petition. Will you sign the petition today and help Annie get to 100,000 signatures by Monday? We can’t all be with Annie in person, but we can lend her our names – and our support:

SIGN THE PETITION

“The idea that he was being encouraged and rewarded for doing something that would potentially kill him is hard to swallow. If there had been interventions on the gambling sites, rather than incentives, then perhaps he would still be here… I don’t want what happened to Luke to happen to anyone else…The delays to the white paper mean there will be plenty more people suffering.” [5] – Annie

After struggling with gambling for years, Annie’s husband Luke was given “free bets” to encourage him to gamble during the pandemic. [6] If these gambling laws had been updated sooner – to stop inducements like free bets, to curb relentless advertising and ensure people don’t bet more than they can afford – hundreds of lives could’ve been saved.

Public Health England estimates there are more than 400 gambling-related suicides every year. [7] Every day another life is lost, another family is torn apart – and still the Government is delaying action to stop gambling suicides.

38 Degrees supporters – that’s people like you, reading this email – have forced the Government to clamp down on gambling giantsbefore. In 2018, we convinced the Government to reduce the maximum stake on betting machines in bookmakers from £100 to £2. [8] Together we can make them take action again.

So, will you sign Annie’s petition today and support her as she travels to Downing Street to deliver it in just a few days time?

SIGN THE PETITION

Thank you for being involved,

David, Megan, Robin and the 38 Degrees team

P.S.: If you or anyone you know are struggling with gambling, you can get support at Gamcare or by calling 0808 8020 133.

P.P.S: Annie originally started her petition on the Government website but after 6 months all petitions there are shut down, unlike 38 Degrees. 38 Degrees petitions will remain active for as long as you need them. If you wish to start a petition today, please click here.

NOTES:
[1] UK Government: The Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC MP
IGB: Conservatives pledge Gambling Act review in manifesto
The Guardian: Bereaved families demand investigation of every UK gambling-linked suicide
[2] The Guardian: Dismay as UK gambling reform white paper shelved for fourth time
[3] 38 Degrees: Stop gambling suicides, publish the Gambling Act white paper
[4] BBC News: ‘Outdated gambling laws need urgent change’ – Lord Foster
[5] The Guardian: ‘I don’t want what happened to my husband happening to anyone else’: the widow campaigning for gambling law reform
[6] iNews: ‘My husband took his life after a free bet bonus sparked a gambling spiral during lockdown’
[7] See note 1
[8] 38 Degrees: Addictive gambling machines: Victory!‘