Streeting’s new excuse for bashing striking doctors? The war in Iran, of course!

Yesterday, 25 March, the British Medical Association (BMA) announced six new days of strike action. The news followed the union members’ vote to reject the government’s latest offer on pay and jobs. Following the announcement, supposedly-socialist health secretary Wes Streeting took to the Commons to continue his streak of bashing the doctors’ union.

His excuse for paltry pay offers this time? Well, the economic fallout of the war in Iran, of course. As if he was just brimming with constructive pay offers before Netanyahu and Trump started their latest bombing campaign, the little fucking weasel.

Strike action

On 24 March, the BMA officially rejected the government’s latest pay offer. This had included pay uplifts for doctors after the successful completion of their ARCP (annual review of competence progression). Likewise, it also committed to a reform of the nodal points of the pay scale structure.

However, the union called the government out for moving the goalposts during the negotiations. Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) negotiators said that, at the last moment, the Government reduced the original investment on the pay element of the offer. Worse still, they said they’d stretch this over a three-year period.

Given this appalling behaviour from the government, the RDC announced that residents will stage a six-day walkout. This will last from 7 April until 13 April.

Streeting — moving the goalposts

Do read on nice to have a laugh in these troubled times?

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2026/03/26/streetings-new-excuse/

Welllllll this isn't great.

Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website

"...a system that evaluates your company’s landing page in real time and, if it decides the page won’t perform well enough for a specific user, replaces it with an AI-generated version assembled on the fly. The user never sees what your team built, they see what Google's machine learning model thinks they should see instead."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/03/06/google-just-patented-the-end-of-your-website

#SEO #Google #AI #enshittification

Far-reaching powers over Internet access are being rushed through.

Last minute amendments have been shoved into the UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Ministers will be able to force anyone over 13 to use unsafe and unregulated age-ID services to access whatever content the government wants.

Find out more ⬇️

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/13-year-olds-could-be-compelled-to-use-unregulated-age-verification/

#ageverification #privacy #freedomofexpression #internet #ukpolitics #ukpol

The (perverse) incentives of OFSTED's grading system are clear in the Sutton Trusts research that shows top graded schools take on far fewer students with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND) than the average comprehensive school, and also a proportion lower than the share of SEND pupils in their catchment areas.

Its rational, of course to avoid SEND students if your school is judged on both results & budgets... but socially unjust!

#schools #SEND #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/mar/24/english-secondary-schools-half-send-pupils-as-average-comprehensive

Nothing has changed. -- Yet.

But we stand on the edge of inevitable economic cataclysm, such as not seen in our lifetimes.

It’s an odd, hold-your-breath moment,
waiting for what the International Energy Agency (IEA) says is now certain to happen:

an energy crisis so critical it will be the equivalent of the two oil crises in 1973 and 1979 and Russia’s 2022 full invasion of Ukraine, put together.

The IEA says it’s already too late to prevent this impending energy crisis.

Donald Trump has swerved the Armageddon destruction of oil and gas facilities threatening the entire Middle East -- but too late.

The deep recession, probably depression,
that his war has caused is heading around the globe. Britain will be hard hit.

Trump calls on the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their religious dictatorship.
The rest of the world is willing the American people to rise up
– progressives, Magas and stock marketeers alike
– against their wildly out-of-control president who has no exit strategy because he never had an entry purpose.

This world-changing conflagration will cost his citizens dear and they need to frighten him out of war: unpopularity is all he fears.

Old allies will never again trust the US after its people elected not once but twice this most unfit, mindlessly dangerous man.
“Leader of the free world”?
We will never view US presidents that way again,
after Trump’s preference for Putin, lifting sanctions on Russian oil, betraying Ukraine, detesting Europe and trashing all the international order it stands for.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/23/war-unprecedented-depression-trump-mania-iran?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other