In response to the call from Palestinian trade unions to escalate pressure to end complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid, three major trade union federations representing over 80 trade union affiliates across the islands of Ireland and Britain have announced support for workplace actions this Thursday 14 May, coinciding with the 78th anniversary of Nakba.

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society including almost all trade unions, salutes the three trade union federations – all affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation.

In Ireland and Scotland— the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Scottish Congress of Trade unions are supporting the upcoming workplace day of action in solidarity with Palestine on Thursday 14 May.

The UK Trades Union Congress is also supporting the upcoming workplace day of action in solidarity with Palestine on Thursday 14 May.

Many trade unions are longstanding supporters of Palestine

Major British trade unions affiliate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and have been supporting the workplace days of action since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, to build solidarity with the people of Palestine and to challenge UK complicity with Israel.

Under the banner of “Workplace Day of Action for Palestine,” all three federations have worked with Palestine solidarity organisations to answer the call of support for workplace solidarity action.

The BDS movement calls on all trade unions, student organisations and wider civil society organisations, across Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, to take action this Thursday 14 May.

National demonstrations marking 78 years since the Nakba are organised by solidarity networks for Dublin and London with local demonstrations organised for Belfast and Edinburgh this Saturday 16 May.

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement said:

Of all people, workers understand well what solidarity means. The Palestinian labour movement has called for meaningful solidarity with our struggle to end Israel’s genocide and dismantle its underlying, decades-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid. Ending all complicity in Israel’s crimes is a profound moral obligation and a necessary first step of solidarity.

14 May will be a powerful statement of solidarity in this respect. When workers from across Ireland and Britain take real action to end the complicity of their respective states, corporations and institutions, they recall the best traditions of international workers’ solidarity. They also contribute considerably to building the critical mass of people power we need to affect real policy change.

Amongst the calls issued by Palestinian trade unions on May Day was the call to organise, join and amplify peaceful actions to mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, on or around 15 May.

The workplace day of action coincides with the 78th anniversary of the Nakba: the planned ethnic cleansing and expulsion of most of the Indigenous people of Palestine and the destruction of hundreds of our towns and villages to create Israel as a settler colony premised on supremacy and apartheid.

The BDS movement calls on all trade unions, student organisations and wider civil society organisations, across Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, to take action on Thursday 14 May.

Peter Leary, deputy director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said:

This workplace day of action comes as we prepare to march to commemorate the Nakba, the catastrophe inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel since 1948.

Workers and trade unionists have a vital role to play in building solidarity with Palestine. Israel can only carry out its crimes, including genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, because of the assistance it receives from governments, companies and institutions in countries like the UK.

By organising in support of the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, workers can help to end this complicity in grave violations of international law.

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We urge everyone to take action this Thursday and join us at 12noon on Exhibition Road in London on Saturday when we march in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their ongoing struggle for freedom and justice.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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Sudan — Heavy fighting is being reported between Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters and Sudanese government forces. The outbreak comes days after the UN reported drones were the leading cause of civilian deaths in the genocidal conflict to which the British are a party.

Drop Site News picked up on a story by local journalist @Bsonblast:

Heavy fighting and drone strikes across western and central Sudan killed and wounded civilians on May 12. In South Kordofan state, near Sudan’s border with South Sudan, RSF and SPLM-N al-Hilu forces shelled the town of Dilling, causing civilian casualties.

Adding:

Drone strikes hit a market, civilian vehicles, and a water well that served as a primary source of water for the community in Kornoi, North Darfur, killing civilians. Additional drone strikes were reported in El Geneina near the Chad border and in Al-Daein, the capital of East Darfur state.

Today's quick update [May 12]:

– RSF/SPLM-N (Alhilu) shelling on Dilling, South Kordofan; civilian deaths & injuries reported.

– Drone strike on a market and civilian vehicles in Kornoi, North Darfur; civilian deaths reported.#KeepEyesOnSudan pic.twitter.com/RgcNcOZ5IE

— Munchkin (@BSonblast) May 13, 2026

The three-year war has killed thousands and displaced millions. RSF, backed by the UAE, is fighting the Sudanese government. Gold interests and regional influence are at stake. Numerous foreign actors, including the UK, have caused the war to fester through active participation and/or outright passivity. Israel, too, is a major player in the war.

As the Canary has reported, the war in Sudan is theoretically between Arab-majority RSF and the Sudanese government. But foreign states pursuing their own interests are backing the combatants.

Egypt backs the government, alongside Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Israel has backed both sides at different times. RSF has killed Sudanese civilians in vast numbers. And some estimates say 150,000 people have died overall, with over 10mn displaced by fighting.

Sudan — Drones are killing civilians

The UN reported on 11 May:

Drones caused more than 80 per cent of civilian deaths in Sudan’s war during the first four months of 2026, killing at least 880 people.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned both sides for their use of unmanned aerial weapons:

Armed drones have now become by far and away the leading cause of civilian deaths.

This increasing reliance on drones allows hostilities to continue unabated in the approaching rainy season, which in the past has brought about a lull in ground operations.

The UN said vital health facilities have been targeted a dozen times in 2026:

Health facilities have been hit at least 12 times during the four-month period. Some have closed their doors, which has forced civilians to travel long distances for care or to go without.

There are also reports that aid can’t get to those in need due to combatants making delivery a political game. All Africa reported:

UN estimates indicate that more than 33 million Sudanese, including millions of people in Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

However:

This assistance is now at risk after the humanitarian file has turned into a political battleground between the warring parties: the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which vie for the legitimacy of granting work permits to organisations.

The Canary reported on 31 March that the UK had downgraded the Sudan crisis on key monitoring lists in order to avoid “pissing off” the Emiratis. The UAE, a major arms customer of the UK, is fueling the conflict by arming RSF. The people of Sudan — itself a former British colony — find themselves living and dying at the meeting point of naked regional ambitions and cold western indifference.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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(David Fuentes/Alamy)

14 min read13 May

As consensus grows around the need for social media and smartphone restrictions for under-16s, Sienna Rodgers reports that campaigner mums across the country are now bringing the fight to edtech

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For Bridget Phillipson, Britain’s embrace of edtech – educational technology – is exciting.

“I’m so proud that the UK is an edtech powerhouse,” the Education Secretary declared in a speech in January. Announcing a £23m expansion of the government’s edtech pilot programme, she continued: “AI can deliver the biggest leap forward for learning in centuries – perhaps even since the invention of the printing press”.

As the Department for Education boasts that it is “heralding a digital revolution in education”, £187m has been put into a ‘TechFirst’ skills programme to bring AI into the classroom and a commitment has been made to roll out AI tutoring in schools for disadvantaged pupils.

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For an increasingly vocal group of parents, however, edtech is an unwelcome development in their children’s education – one that is being foisted on them, both at school and at home, without their consent. They suspect that the government’s enthusiasm for edtech is based on the push for economic growth via tech investment, but believe that children’s education and attainment is being harmed in a way that will do little good for our economy in the long term.

Those parents have recently scored victories in other areas of education policy. The government has agreed, ahead of the results of its consultation on a ban, to put restrictions on the social media use of under-16s. And in March, it released new guidance urging parents to limit the screen time of under-5s – avoiding it altogether under two years, and no more than one hour a day for children aged two to five.

“Parents of young children are facing a constant battle with screens,” the press release unveiling the guidance empathetically states. Yet the guidance, while putting the onus on parents, does not apply to education settings – even though many parents complain that edtech is making that constant struggle over screen time harder.

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“The next battlefield is in education,” confirms Arabella Skinner, policy director at Health Professionals for Safer Screens. She is delighted by the screen time guidance but says: “There is no point doing any of this work unless they look at it holistically across the whole day.”

Her group comprises thousands of concerned health professionals from paediatricians, psychiatrists and psychologists to speech and language, occupational and physical therapists, plus ophthalmologists, opticians, audiologists and hundreds of GPs.

“The conversation has been around the mental health of a 15-year-old – that’s where it got stuck,” she says, when in fact resulting health problems extend much further, in both age and conditions. One A&E consultant in her group recalls a child presenting with swollen legs: “You think it’s kidney failure. Turns out he’d been sitting for a week, pretty much, playing games, 17 hours a day with his legs up.”

Skinner is training health professionals to spot such signs, and wants questions around digital devices to become standard: “In the same way you ask people about how much alcohol they have, we should be thinking about asking about their screen time.”

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“We came in here more worried about teens. We are now more worried about early years,” she adds. Recent research findings are stark.

The latest report by the 1001 Critical Days Foundation – an organisation founded by Andrea Leadsom to emphasise the importance of the period from pregnancy to two years old – found that more than two-thirds of under-2s use screens. According to their data, nearly 20 per cent of infants aged four to 11 months watch them for over an hour a day.

Ofcom data has identified that 98 per cent of British two-year-olds are watching TV or online videos, on average for more than two hours a day. And early years charity Kindred Squared found that 28 per cent of UK children starting primary school do not know how to use a book – with many attempting to swipe or tap on them, as they would on a tablet.

Education minister Baroness Smith has argued in the Lords that, when it comes to digital devices, “it is important not to conflate personal and educational use”. The contention of edtech advocates is that children must be taught digital literacy.

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But critics question what skills young children are really building when they scroll YouTube shorts or play games on the iPad. Many of these apps look less like genuine learning and more like limbic capitalism – the term coined by historian David Courtwright to refer to products that exploit the brain’s pleasure centre to maximise profit through dopamine hits.

The House put out a call in one of the many WhatsApp groups for parents concerned about screens to hear first-hand experiences of edtech; a flood of eager responses soon came.

Ex-childminder Dimitriya, a mum of three girls who lives in the North West, recalls her eldest daughter coming back from school in reception – when the children are aged four to five – with a QR code for her maths homework. It linked to NumBots, a learning platform dedicated to addition and subtraction. The game allows users to choose a character and rewards them with stars when they answer questions correctly and quickly enough.

“We’ve experienced anger issues with our daughter that we haven’t seen before. She started throwing and hitting and screaming,” says Dimitriya. The behaviour left them confused. “Do we have a child that’s just naturally competitive and we haven’t noticed up until this moment, or is it something to do with the platform and what she’s experiencing?” they wondered. “I believe that it’s the platform – it’s the gamification of the learning process.”

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She also noticed – as this House writer has found while visiting local state schools – that reception classrooms feature big interactive boards. “Massive tablets, basically,” she says. “I have tried to understand how long exactly they spend on that thing – nobody can tell me.”

At the start of every school year, Dimitriya now explains to the teachers that they have no one-to-one devices at home, and her kids won’t be using the apps for homework. Despite other parents at the school reporting similar stories, such as kids breaking iPads when they can’t do the required number of maths equations in 50 seconds, the school is pushing back.

“We’ve been told that if we don’t sign the user agreement for next year, our children will be left out from their computing lessons,” she reports. The headteacher has been firm: “She basically said to us, ‘If you don’t like the school and what we’re doing, you can leave.’” Unable to find schools nearby that take a screen-free approach, she is now seriously considering homeschooling.

Annaliese, a former primary school teacher who used to work for Westminster think tanks and now campaigns against smartphones in schools, has children of primary school and preschool ages.

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“My main concern is that they are highly addictive,” she says of the homework apps. “You give the kids the device, and they’re doing this fun game, and they might be meant to do 10 minutes of it, but getting that device off them afterwards is incredibly difficult.”

Her children were told to use Times Table Rock Stars, another popular app promoted by schools but aimed at those aged six and above, for their maths homework. It similarly offers avatars and users are encouraged to collect virtual coins, allowing them to personalise their characters.

“It was with great trepidation that I would give over the laptop to do Times Table Rock Stars, because I knew that whilst the requirement was to do 10 minutes, it was going to take an hour out of that afternoon to wrangle that device off the child and then to put up with the inevitable tantrum meltdown afterwards,” says Annaliese.

It was not only behavioural consequences that worried her but also their effectiveness in terms of learning.

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“I noticed that, with my daughter, she might actually be doing quite well with her times tables on an app, but if I asked her orally, she’d find it really difficult. It’s almost like she couldn’t transfer the learning into a different context. And it was at that point that I opted out of her using it.

“I created the analogue alternative, which was literally just to print out the Times Table Rock Stars worksheets and get her to do those with a timer that I bought for a fiver, and she’s doing really well.”

Kifah has encountered problems at an earlier age still. She is based in Scotland, where the use of edtech is even more intense than in England as a result of direct mandates by councils.

You think it’s kidney failure. Turns out he’d been sitting for a week, pretty much, playing games

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When Kifah’s son started nursery part-time, she found he became disoriented and overstimulated. “We couldn’t work out for a really long time why he was so distressed; why he was so violent and dysregulated,” she says. Then she discovered they were handing iPads to the kids daily.

“I had asked them not to use screens with him, so I was in shock, obviously. I approached them, and their argument was that the council would withhold funding if they did not have technology as part of their curriculum. I said, ‘But he’s two?!’” Kifah recalls.

“We withdrew him, and all these behaviours stopped.” But at the next early years setting, she found they refused to stop showing them YouTube Kids. Next, she tried an outdoor nursery – but again found that council policy meant they had to use tech, so were giving her son a phone on which to select songs to play.

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“It’s really been quite upsetting for us and really difficult. We’re trying to give our child the best start in life. A lot of what we do is evidence-based in our home, and we’re just getting told, ‘Well, this is how it’s done now.’ And that’s not really evidence,” she says. “We’re a one-income family now, which we never, ever expected to be.”

While Sweden, Denmark, Madrid and Los Angeles are rolling back digital learning, there has been a major push in Scotland for all primary and secondary pupils to have one-to-one devices. This has led to safeguarding problems, with pupils bypassing safety filters on school iPads to access violent and sexual content.

Politicians on the left often focus on equitable access to digital tools – and yet ironically, there is anecdotal evidence that parents who can afford fees are turning to private schools (such as the famous Heritage School in Cambridge) for screen-free education.

Private schools are not forced to undertake the reception baseline assessment, for example, to which the government introduced a digital element in 2025. This is the mandatory test that all reception pupils – aged four – must take in their first six weeks, designed to measure student progress between the start and end of primary school.

Dr Mandy Pierlejewski, a nursery and reception teacher turned academic, led a team that carried out a study on the assessment – first, looking at two schools in 2024; then, three schools in 2025, when a touchscreen aspect was brought in. Filming pupils from behind to preserve anonymity, they analysed their body language and found signs of stress in some of the 2024 children and every one of the 17 children studied last year when they were given a tablet for a 20-minute test.

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“A lot of the children didn’t have the digital literacy they needed to complete that test,” she recalls. “Not all children, for instance, realise that you could diagonally drag and drop.” The test asked the four-year-olds to move three pictures into boxes above, in the correct order, to make a story. Many got it wrong – but not because they didn’t understand sequencing.

“Some children really didn’t have the digital skills needed at all. They were tapping on things multiple times. Some of them kept shutting the iPad down by pressing the Home button, and they had to be all started up again.”

In 2024, the maths questions involved moving concrete materials. For subtraction, they were presented with six little plastic bears, told to take two away, then asked how many were left.

 The 2025 digital version was more abstract: presented with a picture on the screen of a tree with four leaves on, the teacher says “three leaves fall to the floor – how many leaves are left?” Of the 17 children the study watched, 16 incorrectly counted “1, 2, 3, 4”, not realising they had to move three leaves on the screen themselves before counting.

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“The last thing they heard was, ‘how many leaves are left on the tree?’, so they just counted all the leaves. Now, for 16 out of 17 children to get that wrong, there is something wrong with that question,” Pierlejewski says. “I teach primary school teachers mathematical development.

We’ve experienced anger issues with our daughter that we haven’t seen before. She started throwing and hitting and screaming

You start with concrete materials, then you proceed to pictorial representations of the concrete thing, then you move to abstract. It has to go in that order, because that’s how children’s brains develop.”

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She predicts that the latest cohort’s results will be worse than previous years. There is no mention of testing digital skills – the assessment is still supposed to be focused on numeracy and literacy only – yet Pierlejewski’s study suggests otherwise. It raises questions about the purpose of edtech and whether it is being used with intention.

Skinner, of Health Professionals for Safer Screens, concludes: “They need to separate educational technology that frees up teachers’ time to be able to teach – because nothing is better than a teacher who’s inspired and delivering it – versus technology that is in front of the student, and takes them away from proper teaching.”

SafeScreens co-founder Jane Rowland, who provides resources to help parents fighting schools to opt out, argues: “What parents are repeatedly being told by schools is ‘we’re preparing the children for a digital workplace’, which, to me, is just nonsense. A digital workplace doesn’t use gamified applications for their employees.”

She is asking government to pause edtech, conduct a review and establish certification for platforms that are shown to be educationally beneficial for children.

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Her demands are echoed by the Conservatives, who put forward amendments to the Schools Bill to protect pen-and-paper exams, give parents the right to opt out of screen-based homework, and ensure children would not be required to complete the reception baseline assessment on screens. Although ministers have agreed to introduce a legal ban on smartphones in schools and deliver age restrictions on social media, they have not so far changed course on edtech.

“The government really need to get a grip on the screen creep happening in our classrooms,” shadow education secretary Laura Trott tells The House. “When it comes to screens in schools, we should be guided by the evidence. Research shows that writing by hand supports memory and deeper learning in a way that screens simply don’t.”

“We need to pause and review the evidence before driving any more technology into our schools,” she adds. “We need to end this uncontrolled experiment on our children. Until there is clear evidence that screens improve learning, the focus should be back on books, not devices.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Technology plays an important role in broad, rich learning experiences in classrooms across the country, and it is essential that children learn to use technology confidently and safely, so they can gain the skills they’ll need as they move through life.

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“Equally, we understand concerns about excessive screen time and that unmonitored or unlimited personal use can carry risks and recognise that we must get the balance right.

That’s why we are supporting children and young people to develop healthy relationships with technology, including through our new guidance to help families build good screen habits from a young age, banning mobile phones in schools and consulting on the next measures on online safety for children.”

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12th May, 2026. Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, in Downing Street for a Cabinet meeting. | Alamy

2 min read40 min

Ed Miliband has the numbers to stand in a leadership contest if Andy Burnham is unable, his allies say.

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The Energy Secretary is understood to be considering running for Labour leader if Health Secretary Wes Streeting triggers a contest in the coming days. 

According to Streeting’s allies he plans to resign and mount leadership challenge against the Prime Minister as early as tomorrow.

“If Miliband wants to run he has the numbers,” an ally told PoliticsHome. 

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Pressure is mounting on Keir Starmer to resign after 93 of his MPs, including four ministers and several junior aides, called for him to set out an orderly timetable for departure.

The Times reports Starmer told his allies he will stand and fight if Streeting succeeds in triggering a leadership contest. The Prime Minister has met with ministers tonight to shore up support. 

The Greater Manchester Mayor is one of the candidates favoured among Labour MPs to replace Starmer, but would first have to return to Parliament as an MP.

It is still unclear which Greater Manchester MP will stand aside for Burnham and if the NEC would block him from standing again. There’s also no certainty Burnham would be able to find a route back to Parliament before a contest is triggered. 

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Miliband and Angela Rayner are seen as the likely soft left candidates to run against Streeting if a contest is triggered. Miliband previously led the party from 2010 to 2015, but lost decisively to David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2015 including all but one of its Scottish MPs. 

A Rayner ally told PoliticsHome: “The left / soft left want Andy but most do want Angie if that doesn’t happen but Ed has growing support.”

LabourList polling in February found Ed Miliband is the most favoured member of the Labour Cabinet among party members with a net favourability of +70. 

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A Labour MP on the centre right told PoliticsHome that Miliband becoming Labour leader again would be a “catastrophe”. 

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At this point, Donald Trump seems to be running the Democrats’ campaign to win the next election himself. How else do you explain comments like this:

Trump on Iran War:

Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?

Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation pic.twitter.com/TJ94pGpqD8

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— Acyn (@Acyn) May 12, 2026

So Trump, what happened to ‘America first’?

In the clip above, Trump is asked if he thinks about Americans’ financial situation when he’s negotiating with Iran. He responds:

Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that matters.

This would be a good line for him to take if anyone believed the war was actually about stopping Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. As people have responded, however:

Totally unacceptable. He doesn’t give a shit about us. He only cares about Israel, because they bribed him, and very likely have blackmail on him. We need to have an American president! Someone who cares about Americans, instead of just super wealthy supporters of Israel.

— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) May 12, 2026

Meanwhile, inflation is skyrocketing in the US as a result of Trump’s mishandling of the economy:

US wholesale inflation soars to 6% in biggest surge since 2022 https://t.co/UB3Q8tDclD

— Financial Times (@FT) May 13, 2026

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As the BBC reported on 12 May:

US prices rose in April at their fastest rate since May 2023 as the impact of the war in Iran was increasingly felt by consumers.

A jump in the cost of gasoline and groceries pushed the consumer price index (CPI), showing the rate prices rose by in the past 12 months, to 3.8%.

It is the highest level since inflation hit 4% three years ago.

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Meanwhile, the US’s big hope is to get things back to where they were before Trump and Israel’s disastrous assault on Iran:

Marco Rubio explains that the US's ambition is

To return Strait of Hormuz to the way it was

Before the US and Israel illegally invaded Iran pic.twitter.com/7eMUjCFezv

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— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 12, 2026

It’s also worth remembering that the US already had a successful nuclear deal with Iran. The reason it isn’t still standing is because Trump ripped it up. And now, of course, Iran has more reason than ever to pursue a nuclear weapons programme.

The state of this guy

The above wasn’t Trump’s only shameful interview on 12 May either:

OMG!!! Trump just EXPLODED at a female reporter for asking him about his sudden request from Congress for DOUBLE the amount for his ballroom.

"I doubled the size of it, you DUMB PERSON. I doubled it. You're not a smart person."

Holy hell. pic.twitter.com/Evvr1aWwZ5

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 12, 2026

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America can’t keep running the White House as an end-of-life care facility for retired narcissists.

Featured image via The Canary

By Willem Moore

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The Media Sovereignty Act Campaign has been in touch with news of its work to end the corporate media stranglehold on UK public life:

After just seven weeks, the parliamentary petition demanding that the government pass the Media Sovereignty Act has reached the first threshold of 10,000 signatures.

This means that the Labour government now has to state its position on the domination of UK politics, through the hijacking of our media, by a tiny billionaire elite.

We do not have a free democracy, as a tiny billionaire elite has captured our media.

The Media Sovereignty Act has five demands:

• Bans foreign media ownership.
• Bans the concentration of UK national media ownership by one person or corporation.
• Funds independent and local media with a social media levy.
• Requires national media to be under the remit of the statutory regulator.
• Requires dark-money funded thinktanks that are covered by the media to declare donations in real time.

Director of the Media Sovereignty Act Campaign Donnachadh McCarthy said:

In my extensive career, I have come across visceral fear of ‘the Daily Mail test’ across all sections of British society and its establishments. It is time to end this billionaire hijacking of our democracy once and for all.

Co-director Caspar Hughes said:

I believe deeply that the most urgent political issue of our time is ending the hijacking of political power by the billionaire media owners. They persuade the UK population to vote against their own best interests, and this must stop.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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The BBC has released an important report on the vile racism that NHS workers are increasingly facing, but has simultaneously exposed its preference for a ‘hierarchy of racism’.

Increasing racism against NHS staff

A damning BBC article from 12 May led with the headline:

‘Patients have tried to punch me because of my skin colour’

The outlet had asked all “NHS hospital and mental health trusts in England” how much racial abuse from patients their staff had reported. And it said:

From the 106 trusts which provided data, there were 8,235 such reports in 2024, a 17% increase on the 7,002 reports in 2023. Several trusts did not record reports of racism prior to 2023, meaning older comparison figures are not available, but campaigners claim the issue has been growing for several years.

The article also gave examples of racism — specifically against people who came to the UK from other countries. These included:

• A nurse from the Philippines who mentioned facing slurs, attempts to physically assault him, and patients refusing medication — all because of his skin colour.
• A campaign group, Equality 4 Black Nurses, that said some nurses have left healthcare or gone back to their home countries due to the abuse they’ve faced. The group also asserted that most people avoid reporting incidents because they “don’t trust the system to protect them”.
• A call handler from India who noted a significant increase in abuse in the last year, with numerous daily incidents of racism.

The BBC’s hierarchy of racism in one line

We should all know by now that the BBC is a state propaganda outlet. So when it echoes government talking points, we really shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s particularly sad to see when, in doing so, it undermines reporting that’s both serious and important. And that’s exactly what happened in the article about racism against NHS staff.

In just one line, the BBC amplified one form of racism above others, despite not giving any examples of such abuse in the article itself. It may argue that it was paraphrasing the words of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), but the BBC said:

A review was being conducted into antisemitism and other forms of racism and a support package to protect frontline staff from violence and aggression had been announced in 2025, the DHSC said.

This was the only mention of antisemitism in the article. Yet suddenly, it gained prominence and special emphasis above all “other forms of racism” — particularly the types that target people because their skin is Black or Brown, or because their accent is different. The mention of the ‘other forms’ was almost a throwaway comment.

Perhaps this was the BBC passing on the ruling Labour Party‘s clear hierarchy of racism. But that doesn’t change the fact that the outlet chose to highlight antisemitism while failing to specifically mention the other types of racism that it had literally reported on in depth in the same article.

We need a consistently anti-racist media

All racism is vile. And with the far right making big inroads in British politics, it’s unsurprisingly on the rise. The sea of racist media propaganda, meanwhile, is adding to this toxic situation. As is the dangerous and cynical political weaponisation of antisemitism accusations.

We need media that challenges all forms of racism in equal measure. We need media that doesn’t prioritise one community’s concerns over another’s. But as we’ve seen all too often, it seems the BBC is unable to be (or uninterested in being) the media that we so badly need right now.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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The cost of living crisis is continuing to bite with price rises and shrinkflation eating into workers’ pay. But hope springs eternal for hard-pressed CEOs. Their pay rises are comfortably outstripping those of the rank and file. And this means the pay ratio is an ever-growing chasm.

The High Pay Centre, a think tank focused on pay, corporate governance and responsible business, has published a briefing on trends in executive director compensation, CEO-to-employee pay ratios and employee pay. The High Pay Centre suggests that a wide pay ratio can lead to poor business outcomes.

This is intended as an update on figures assessed in the High Pay Centre’s ‘CEO Pay’ and ‘Pay Ratios’ reports, providing data from FTSE 100 firms that have released annual reports with year ends after 1 April 2025. The sample contains 64 companies, meaning there is potential for change as more reports come out during the year.

The High Pay Centre believes it’s vital to consider how to allocate a corporation’s wealth. Bosses should ensure that jobs are secure, fulfilling and provide the necessary income for a good standard of living.

Pay ratio ever-widening

Median (half get more, half get less) CEO pay stood at £5.2m. This represents a 15% increase in a year for the same group of companies. The mean (everyone’s pay added up and divided by the number of people) was £6.2m. This is a 19.75% increase.

Across the eight industries in the sample, only technology saw a fall in CEO pay from the previous year.

UK employees’ pay growth is significantly trailing behind that of their bosses with median employee pay having increased 4.85% versus 15% for CEOs.

Among the sample companies, the pay ratio between a median CEO and median employee is 95:1. And, as things stand, that’s only going to increase.

Andrew Speke, spokesperson for the High Pay Centre, said:

The data in this initial update is both shocking and concerning. A 15% median CEO pay increase, at a time when real-term wages are stagnating and living standards falling, is in neither the country nor the economy’s best interests.

This reflects corporate short-termism at its clearest. Companies themselves should be concerned about these trends, as research shows that when CEO pay rises significantly faster than employee pay, firms may be more exposed to operational and reputational risks. These include staff turnover, weakened employee morale and absenteeism, all of which hold the potential to significantly undermine firm productivity.

Policymakers, regulators and companies must endeavour to ensure a balanced, fair and sustainable model of corporate reward that recognises the indispensable value of the workforce alongside executive leadership. Addressing pay gaps should not be viewed solely as a matter of fairness, but also as a vital step in building a resilient and productive business model.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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The FIFA World Cup, which began over ninety years ago, is one of the most prominent tournaments to have witnessed bizarre incidents—whether funny or painful—with these events remaining etched in the memory of football history.

The strangeness of World Cup events has not faded with the passing of time; rather, it has become even more ingrained in the minds of fans of this most important and popular tournament in the world of football.

For this reason, any event that takes place during the tournament remains fresh in the memory, no matter how many years pass. Fans of the World Cup, which is held every four years, look forward to its most notable events, as its stories are renewed with every new edition. In this report, the Canary reviews the strangest events in World Cup history.

World Cup history – a national team wearing Napoli shirts

In the third-place play-off at the 1934 World Cup, which pitted Germany against Austria, a unique incident occurred. The match was held at the Napoli stadium, and at that time each team had only one kit.

Due to the similarity in the colours of the two teams’ kits (white shirts and black shorts), it was impossible to distinguish between the players, leading to the match being temporarily halted. Following intervention by the referee and the crowd, a draw was held to determine which team would change their kit, and the choice fell on the Austrian team, but they did not have an alternative kit. A quick solution was found, with an official from Napoli providing the Austrian team with the club’s shirts, which they wore to complete the match, which ended in a 3-2 victory for Germany.

World Cup stolen twice

The theft of the World Cup is one of the strangest incidents, as the trophy, which was known as the Jules Rimet Cup after the tournament’s founder, was stolen twice, first in 1966 and then in 1983. Since then, the original versions of the trophies have not been found, prompting the organisers to produce three identical replicas to prevent a repeat of the incident.

From prison to the podium

At the 1982 World Cup held in Spain, an extraordinary story emerged involving Italian star Paolo Rossi, who was released from prison in the same year as the tournament to lead his national team to victory over West Germany.

Rossi scored six goals in the last three matches, including the opening goal in the final, a hat-trick against Brazil in the quarter-finals, and two goals in the semi-final against Poland.

A valid goal disallowed in a World Cup match

The match between Kuwait and France at the 1982 World Cup witnessed a unique moment, as play was halted after the French team scored a valid goal. The Kuwaiti team was participating in the World Cup for the first time in its history as the first Arab-Asian team.

The incident occurred after a spectator blew a whistle, leading the Kuwaiti players to believe the play had ended, so they stopped, whilst the French team continued playing and scored a goal. This angered the Kuwaiti players, prompting Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to take to the pitch demanding the goal be disallowed, which indeed happened, before the match resumed and ended in a 4-2 victory for France. This incident led to Soviet referee Miroslav Stopa being permanently banned from refereeing.

Maradona’s handball goal

The goal scored by the hand of Argentine legend Diego Armando Maradona against England in the quarter-final of the 1986 World Cup is considered one of the defining moments of Argentina’s victory in that tournament, and a major turning point in the striker’s career, which subsequently took him to the world stage.

Tunisian referee Ali Ben Nasser, who officiated the match, awarded Maradona’s handball goal against England, despite its illegality, as he did not see Maradona’s hand when he struck the ball and it entered the net; however, Maradona later apologised to the referee during a visit to his home in Tunisia.

Player sent off after 3 yellow cards

In the match between Croatia and Australia at the 2006 World Cup, player Josip Šimunić received three yellow cards before being sent off, due to an error by English referee Graham Poll, who recorded the first booking in another player’s name, causing the player to remain on the pitch until he received his third booking.

Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt

The 2006 World Cup final between France and Italy witnessed a famous incident when star player Zinedine Zidane delivered a powerful headbutt to the chest of Marco Materazzi following a verbal altercation between them, resulting in his sending-off with a red card in his final match.

Zidane later justified his actions by citing an insult he had received, and the incident remains one of the most famous moments in World Cup history.

Suárez bites Chiellini

In the group stage match between Italy and Uruguay at the 2014 World Cup, a bizarre incident occurred when Luis Suárez bit defender Giorgio Chiellini in the 40th minute, which astonished everyone and sparked widespread controversy in the world of football.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

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When the New York Democrat mayor Zohran Mamdani released his budget for the 2027 financial year, it was  heralded as zeroing the massive $12 billion budget deficit he inherited from his predecessor, Eric Adams.

In turn, it also strikes a symbolic blow against critics of Zohran’s fiscal politics, which struck a notably more socialist tone than those of Independent competitor, Andrew Cuomo. In a statement, Mamdani’s office announced:

Through strong fiscal management, Mayor Mamdani balanced the budget through a combination of aggressive savings, new tax revenue, partnership with Albany and critical new investments in the needs of working class New Yorkers.

The budget is balanced without raising property taxes, slashing services or drawing down the City’s Rainy Day or Retiree Health Benefit Trust reserves and makes the largest City capital commitment to NYCHA in recent history.

If this all sounds a little bit too good to be true, it’s because it is. Mamdani has drawn large chunks of his proposed savings from the state of New York, along with delays on several other key expenses. As such, the budget is more of a short-term patch than a long-term fix.

However, this isn’t necessarily as large a criticism as it may seem. A $12 billion deficit can’t exactly be plugged without massive tax hikes or cuts to public services, neither of which would be popular. As such, we might expect some one-time cash injections and delayed payments.

 Mamdani: ‘This budget rejects that failed politics’

Mayor Mamdani said:

For too long, working New Yorkers have been told that austerity was the answer to adversity. This budget rejects that failed politics.

We are restoring fiscal stability without slashing the services people depend on, without raising property taxes and without asking working families to pay for a crisis they did not create.

Instead, we are making government work for the people of this city: securing support from Albany and taxing the rich so we can invest in housing, safety, child care, parks, libraries and the public goods that make New York the greatest city in the world.

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That tax on the rich takes the form of a ‘pied-à-terre’ second-home tax on properties worth more than $5 million. The mayor’s office values this new income stream at around $500 million.

Likewise, Mamdani is also proposing a reduction to Unincorporated Business Tax (UBT) tax credit. This credit, he claims, “overwhelmingly benefits millionaires”. However, the mayor will first have to get his proposal past  Speaker Julie Menin and the city council.

On top of this, Mamdani also conjured up $1.2 billion in otherwise-idle salary money. Politico largely attributed to this to “the city’s smaller-than-expected headcount in the current fiscal year, which the budget office is using to fund recurring expenses”.

Delayed costs not paid costs

Regarding those one-time cash injections, the mayor’s office stated:

Thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the City secured an additional $4 billion in state support and actions to help stabilise the budget. That includes $352 million in direct aid, $3.2 billion in state authorisations.

Those state authorisations include permission to delay compliance with maximum classroom size mandates. This law was a result of years of lobbying by the Union for Teachers, requiring limits of 20-25 students according to age. As such, the delay is bad news for both teachers and students, even if it does massage the budget.

Likewise, Mamdani also obtained the state’s approval to delay the city’s contributions to pension payments. However, this will also require the permission of four of New York’s five major public pension funds. The plan has also drawn fire from commentators such as Andrew Rein, of the Citizens Budget Commission.

He said:

We have to solve this budget gap today, and basically by stretching out pension payments we’re asking people in the mid-2030s to solve the 2027 budget gap, and that’s simply not fair. We’re going to ask people who don’t even live here yet to help us balance the budget now.

Public money for public services

However, solving this budget gap today is hardly a realistic proposal, especially alongside the ambitious public programmes and expansions that Mamdani has planned. These include, but are by no means limited to:

• $15m for the Department of Parks and Recreation
• $31.7m for the city’s libraries
• $15m for the City University of New York
• $2.3m to launch Little Apple — “the City’s first Municipal day care system”
• $20.5m on supporting street vendors.
• $47.3m for access to mental health care

Faced with a choice between austerity and investment, Mambani’s budget has lent more (but not completely) towards the latter. As such, his long-term gambles may prove an interesting proving ground for similar anti-austerity measures.

The real test will come in several years time, when such temporary fixes are less readily apparent.

Featured image via AP Photo/ Alejandro Granadillo 

By The Canary

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