Weekly roundup

Lets face it, the Friday round up is a Sunday round up !

The response to my book cover has been phenomenal – thank you so much for all your feedback.

This week saw the Home Office double down on their decision to deport 50+ people to Jamaica just before Christmas, in the middle of a global pandemic. Many of these people have been in the UK since childhood, but will be deported to Jamaica next Wednesday, where they may no longer have any connections. Under current laws, foreign nationals who have been convicted of an offence and sentenced to 12 months or more are given “deportation orders”. A number of the people scheduled to fly were vulnerable people who had committed ‘crimes’ such as being present when a phone was stolen, such as the case of Osime Brown who was convicted as a teenager, despite a witness statement that Osime had not taken the phone and had remonstrated with other teens carrying out the robbery to stop. Osime is autistic, has a learning disability with very high support needs. He has no family or friends in Jamaica able to care for him. “If he is deported, he will die,” his mother has said.

The good news, if such a term is permissible in this context, is that just a few hours ago, it emerged that the Home Office will not deport anybody who moved here before they were 12 years old, as such Osime and some others at least will be spared. This development was after a number of public figures spoke out against the travesty https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/27/black-public-figures-urge-airlines-not-to-carry-out-home-office-deportationshowing the government does at least respond to public pressure. However, at this stage the flight is still scheduled and the others -that is anybody who moved here after 12 years of age- is set to be transported to Jamaica on December 2nd! Perhaps ongoing public pressure will make a difference.

In the context of responding to pressure, Amazon’s somewhat pathetic response to its worker’s Black Friday strikes was the promise of bonus of either £300 or £150.  “All through the pandemic, Amazon workers have been risking their health and lives to ensure essential goods are delivered to our doorsteps, helping Amazon achieve record profits. In this context it is alarming that Amazon has treated attempts to unionize with such hostility – as one of the most powerful companies in the world, it should know better,” said Barbora Černušáková, Amnesty International’s Researcher and Advisor on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

To put this paltry amount in  context, Jeff Bezos could give every single one of Amazon’s 876,000 employees a one-off covid bonus of $100K and still have exactly the same amount of wealth as he had this time last year. To just make it all that little bit shittier workers can expect to receive their ‘generous’ Christmas bonus until January.

I find it hard to really make sense of where we are in the world right now. It seems like even with all the new awareness around racial injustice and some other forms of injustice, that power is just too entrenched in corrupt, exploitative hands for there to be enough substantive change in the time frame required. Remember the 2019 UN report saying we only had 12 years left to halt climate change? I mean climate change seems an almost quaint concern in 2020 but it hasn’t stopped because of the global pandemic. “Climate change has been put on the back burner,” says climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré at the University of East Anglia, UK, who advises the UK and French governments.

Biden’s election is undoubtedly a vast improvement given his ahem ‘predecessor’s’ attitude towards environmental collapse but do you think the international commitment and concerted effort required exists? Not to end on a on a downer lads or anything lads haha

Much love

Take care of yourselves x