All posts tagged: national

Why South Africa’s ANC wants a national unity gov’t after election setback | Elections News

Why South Africa’s ANC wants a national unity gov’t after election setback | Elections News

Published by Sam

Johannesburg, South Africa — Reeling from its worst electoral performance in 30 years, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Thursday said it would seek to stitch together a “Government of National Unity” to administer the nation. After days of internal debate within the party, President Cyril Ramaphosa told a meeting of the ANC’s top leadership structure, the national executive committee (NEC), late on Thursday, that South Africa was at a moment of “fundamental consequence” and that the country required extraordinary leadership. In last week’s elections, the ANC lost its majority in South Africa’s parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid. “We therefore agreed to invite political parties to form a Government of National Unity as the best option to move our country forward,” Ramaphosa said. In effect, that means that the ANC – instead of entering into a direct coalition agreement with its main rival parties, the market-friendly and right-leaning Democratic Alliance (DA) or the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – will seek a broad multiparty alliance. And while Ramaphosa …

South Africa’s President Announces Intent to Form National Unity Government

South Africa’s President Announces Intent to Form National Unity Government

Published by Sam

Days after his African National Congress party faced historic losses at the polls, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said on Thursday that he will seek to form a government that includes a wide range of parties, some with starkly opposing views. Led by the A.N.C. since the fall of apartheid, South Africa has been in limbo since the watershed election on May 29 when voters punished the ruling party for failing to address issues like skyrocketing unemployment, regular power outages and high rates of crime. Over the next few days, a weakened A.N.C. will meet with opposition parties to carve out a deal to avoid a hung Parliament — one in which no party or coalition has a majority — in what Mr. Ramaphosa cast as an effort to bring stability to South Africa’s government. “We invite political parties to form a government of national unity as the best option to move our country forward,” Mr. Ramaphosa said in a news conference late on Thursday night. “This moment calls for the broadest unity of …

Will Labour or the SNP serve Scots and their families better? | Scottish National party (SNP)

Will Labour or the SNP serve Scots and their families better? | Scottish National party (SNP)

Published by skeptic

Dani Garavelli says the Scottish National party has not eradicated child poverty in Scotland (The SNP’s woes are a boost for Starmer. But he’s not promising the change Scotland wants, 27 May). Maybe not, but it has made great strides in this direction, within the budgetary constraints imposed by Westminster. The Scottish child payment is the policy of the SNP-led Holyrood government and is paid to all families on benefits in Scotland at £26.70 per week per child. And all children in primary 1 to 5, at schools run by their local council or funded by the Scottish government, can get free school lunches in term-time. Moreover, money has been invested into this to ensure that the meals are of good quality. As Garavelli goes on to say, Keir Starmer will not even commit to abolishing the two-child benefit cap. Child poverty is a scandal in a rich country like the UK, but it is less of a scandal in Scotland than elsewhere. No one in Scotland who cares about this should vote Labour.Sue HawthorneHaddington, East Lothian Dani …

Spontaneous trips and new horizons: why life is more colourful with a National Art Pass | Why I Love My Art Pass

Spontaneous trips and new horizons: why life is more colourful with a National Art Pass | Why I Love My Art Pass

Published by skeptic

Imagine that a benevolent art-loving fairy godmother grants you free entry to hundreds of museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK. How would you make the most of her gift? For Charlotte Patmore, a photographer who has toured the world shooting musicians for album covers and magazines, having a National Art Pass (which really exists – no fairy godmother necessary) has inspired her to engage with art much more frequently than ever before. What’s more, impromptu gallery visits with friends are just as feasible as embarking on planned solo visits. “I’ve been using my National Art Pass on the spur of the moment as it makes popping into an exhibition so easy,” she says. “I still use it a lot on my own – because I really savour those solo moments in galleries – but there have been several exhibitions that I’ve popped along to spontaneously with friends, which has been such a treat every time.” Art Fund is a charity that supports museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, and runs a …

Rise in hospital ‘corridor care’ is national emergency, union warns | Hospitals

Rise in hospital ‘corridor care’ is national emergency, union warns | Hospitals

Published by skeptic

Overcrowding is forcing hospitals to treat so many patients in corridors and storerooms that it constitutes a “national emergency”, the UK’s nursing union has said. The growing and widespread practice is endangering patients’ safety by leaving them without oxygen or easily able to attract staff’s attention, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned. “Corridor care” also deprives patients of their dignity because they have to undergo intimate examinations in view of others and do not have easy access to a toilet, it added. Hospitals become so stretched that some patients have died while being looked after in what the RCN said were “inappropriate areas”, which can also include car parks and fracture rooms. The RCN called on the NHS to recognise the serious risk “corridor care” posed to patients by recording every time it happened and classifying it as a “never event”. The latter would put it on a par with incidents such as surgeons operating on the wrong part of someone’s body. A new RCN report, based on a survey of 11,000 nurses across …

Nurses declare ‘national emergency’ as NHS patients treated in ‘cupboards and car parks’ | UK News

Nurses declare ‘national emergency’ as NHS patients treated in ‘cupboards and car parks’ | UK News

Published by Sam

Hospital patients are “dying in corridors”, nurses have warned as they declared a “national emergency” in the NHS. Patients are regularly treated on chairs in corridors for extended periods of time – and sometimes even days, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has said. They are also receiving cancer diagnoses in public areas, and may have to undergo intimate examinations there too, the union added. A survey of almost 11,000 frontline nursing staff across the UK shows the practice has become widespread, the RCN said. When asked about their most recent shift, almost two in five reported delivering care in an inappropriate area, such as a corridor. Patient privacy and dignity had been compromised, almost seven in 10 said. “You wouldn’t treat a dog this way,” one nurse said. Another nurse recounted a patient with dementia being in a corridor for hours without oxygen. They said: “When I arrived, she was in a wheelchair on a corridor with her daughter. She was extremely agitated, crying and confused. This care environment for any patient, never mind …

Hong Kong Convicts 14 Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial

Hong Kong Convicts 14 Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial

Published by Sam

Fourteen democracy activists in Hong Kong were convicted on Thursday on national security charges, adding to the ranks of dozens of others — once the vanguard of the city’s opposition — who may now become a generation of political prisoners. The authorities had accused 47 pro-democracy figures, including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group, of conspiracy to commit subversion. Thirty-one of them had earlier pleaded guilty. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader convicted 14 of the remaining activists and acquitted two others. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The convictions show how the authorities have used the sweeping powers of a national security law imposed by Beijing to quash dissent across broad swathes of society. Most of the defendants had already spent at least the last three years in detention before the 118-day trial ended. Some of those accused are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in …

National service? Will it be monkey tennis next in this meme election? | General election 2024

National service? Will it be monkey tennis next in this meme election? | General election 2024

Published by skeptic

Bringing back national service is not a policy, it is a meme (Rishi Sunak’s national service pledge is ‘bonkers’, says ex-military chief, 26 May). The Conservatives might as well have announced a fully funded project to “string ’em up”. James Cleverly has suggested recalcitrant teenagers could be working weekends as emergency health responders and special constables. How will the ambulance service deal with someone they must spend resources on training, who is unable or unwilling to contribute? Perhaps refuseniks can be press-ganged into building a wall along the Kent coast so we may make Britain great again. With the government unable to refer to their past and the opposition unwilling to refer to their future, the weeks leading up to 4 July will be characterised by more vacuous memes. Let’s get this election done! David MarstonCoventry My father did his national service in the RAF. He was crystal clear – he was there as cannon fodder and to massage the unemployment figures. If the world is as scary as Rishi Sunak says, then the £2.5bn needs to …

Tories’ national service pledge was sprung on candidates, says minister | Military

Tories’ national service pledge was sprung on candidates, says minister | Military

Published by skeptic

The Conservative campaign pledge to introduce mandatory national service was dreamed up by advisers and sprung on candidates, a government minister has said. Criticism of the headline-grabbing policy has centred on claims it was not fully thought through before being announced, while ministers said just two days before the announcement that a return of national service was not on the cards. “It’s a Conservative party policy. The government’s policy was set out on Thursday,” said the government minister Steve Baker, referring to his colleague Andrew Murrison’s previous insistence there were “no current plans to reintroduce national service”. Baker, who serves as a minister of state at the Northern Ireland Office, said on Monday: “I don’t like to be pedantic but a government policy would have been developed by ministers on the advice of officials and collectively agreed. I would have had a say on behalf of [Northern Ireland]. But this proposal was developed by a political adviser or advisers and sprung on candidates, some of whom are relevant ministers.” On Monday, the Labour leader, Keir …

‘Freedom was around the corner’: how UK activists helped the exiled ANC to defeat apartheid | ANC (African National Congress)

‘Freedom was around the corner’: how UK activists helped the exiled ANC to defeat apartheid | ANC (African National Congress)

Published by skeptic

Speak to those who were fighting it from afar, and they’ll tell you that for a long time, the political situation in apartheid-era South Africa appeared intractable. Even as they wouldn’t allow themselves to feel despondent – the campaign to boycott South African goods had, after all, been successful, and few musicians would tour the country – many activists wondered, deep down, if change would ever come. But in the mid-1980s, things seemed at last to shift. Suddenly, the atmosphere was heady. “There was an energy and excitement that I can’t even begin to describe,” says Chitra Karve, who in 1986 had just taken up a full-time job at the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London. “I worked an inordinate number of hours, but I never thought about that. I never even got tired. You were driven by the pace at which possibility was coming towards you: the possibility of real change.” Front row, from left: President of the ANC Oliver Tambo, US civil rights campaigner Rev Jesse Jackson and then Greater London council leader Ken Livingstone, …