Hands off our NHS
JEREMY Corbyn’s accusation that Boris Johnson is hijacking Brexit and opening the door to Donald Trump is exploding into a major election issue.
The cosy links we expose today between the White House and US drugs firms will fuel fears that Trump wants a big slice of the £130billion NHS pie as the price of any trade deal.
Denials by Tories and their rogue right-wing ally in the Oval Office deserve to be taken with an unhealthily large pinch of salt when Johnson isn’t ruling out privatisation and Trump is on record demanding the NHS be on the table.
Corbyn’s championing of our most precious public service is likely to prove a Labour votewinner following nine years of Tory financial hardship that confirms they can’t be trusted with the NHS.
We want a health service publicly owned and run in Britain because the care is measurably cheaper and considerably better, with fewer precious resources syphoned off as profits either here or across the Atlantic.
Brexit is important but the future of the NHS is a matter of life or death.
Across the world people are already dying from floods, droughts and wildfires made worse by climate change.
And on the whole, it’s the poorest who are hit hardest.
If we carry on burning coal, gas and oil, the situation will get a whole lot worse. But we can fix it – renewable energy is cheap. We know how to insulate homes. We can make buses, trams and trains reliable.
It just needs determination.
Our life support systems are breaking down. What we do now? We need to act while there is still time to fix this.
Scientists estimate that today’s extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than what is considered normal.
Millions of children, including myself, have been striking from school to demand action. But it is the grown-ups, the people in power, who must lead the fight for our planet... starting now.
The climate crisis is everyone’s issue. It’s why the Daily Mirror yesterday held a special climate crisis panel, looking at what we can all do to save our planet.
Chairing the summit at London’s Royal Society was naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham, who hailed the event as “momentous”.
Here, the panel of scientists and activists explain how we must act to avert a climate catastrophe...
Two words come to mind: irreversibility, and injustice.
Irreversibility, because part of the Antarctic ice sheet could collapse. You can’t grow it back, and undo that sea level rise, for thousands of years. Species under multiple pressures could also be tipped into extinction.
Injustice, because the poor will not be able to defend themselves against more extreme weather and rising seas, or rely on access to food and water.
Climate is the predominant driver of life on Earth, with climate and biodiversity being closely intertwined.
The ways we live alter our climate, putting the diversity of life on Earth – as well as human wellbeing – at risk.
To beat this crisis, we must meet our obligations to future generations and choose a different path for development, where we work with nature, fostering a world where wildlife thrives.
Unfortunately, this crisis is huge in every possible way.
The bad outcomes are as bad as elements of nuclear war – millions of deaths, impacts lasting for thousands of years.
To tackle it, we have to change an awful lot – how we get about, how we grow food, generate power, how and what we build. We’ll need to change how we treat nature, what we do with our land and the waste we create. And everyone must join in to fix things.