Reality of climate catastrophe hits home

Dried grass shows the affects of droughts in England (Flickr/ Gwydion M. Williams)

More than half of England and Wales is officially in drought.

Reservoirs in Somerset, in south west England, are now officially classed as exceptionally low, at only half full. Suffolk, in south east England, has only received 2 percent of its usual average July rainfall this year.

And wildfires rage across Scotland and Suffolk, leaving landscapes scorched. 

It is becoming increasingly hard for politicians to deny the reality of climate change—but some still do.

Tory ex-peer and coal baron Matt Ridley says that the “cult of rewilding” is to blame for wildfires.

The Tory rag, the Telegraph, tells workers to “learn to live with a Mediterranean climate” as the British government reports that 2,877 people died in “heat-associated deaths” in May and June this year.

According to the Health Security Agency, this is one of the highest death tolls since records began.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), which once positioned itself as a world leader in climate, has returned to support for the oil and gas industry.

Key party figures this week mourned BP’s departure from the North Sea and called on Andy Burnham to back the industry.

The SNP blames Westminster net zero policies, but the North Sea is a mature basin with declining production.

Oil firms have been leaving the North Sea for decades and new firms buying up oil fields are only interested in short term gains not permanent jobs.

But the SNP has failed to support a just transition with retraining and new jobs for oil and gas workers in renewables. Instead, they want the taxpayer to prop up a declining industry.

And we’ve seen the disastrous result of putting more money into fossil fuels—rising summer temperatures, burning forests and thousands of deaths.

Capitalism and the ruling class has failed to prevent climate disaster and workers are paying the price.

We need a new system, one that puts people before profit and ends the climate catastrophe.

Blame the rich and powerful for abuse, not migrants

Five survivors of serial abuser Mohamed Al-Fayed have been confirmed as victims of modern slavery.

The billionaire and former owner of Fulham Football Club and Harrods department store spent nearly four decades abusing hundreds of women in plain sight.

A year after Al-Fayed’s death in August 2023, at the age of 94, more than 400 victims and witnesses had come forward with allegations of assault, harassment and rape.

Rachael Louw, a survivor who has waived her anonymity, was confirmed as a victim of human trafficking in June of this year.

There is conclusive evidence that suggests that four other women were trafficked.

The far right are whipping up lies that migrants and Muslims pose a unique threat to women.

But we should remember who the real abusers are.

The real systems of abuse are not set up by desperate migrants trying to make it to safety.

They are set up by the rich and powerful. That has been exposed with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Al-Fayed’s crimes were widely known publicly and privately.

They were documented in the media and the police were told about them. Samantha Ramsay, now deceased, made allegations about Al-Fayed to the Metropolitan Police as early as 1995.

Even the royal family was alerted to the allegations by Scotland Yard.

But the warnings were ignored and investigations were dropped because it was decided a conviction against the billionaire wasn’t realistic.

The rich always close ranks and point the finger elsewhere to protect their money, power and the system itself. The only way to bring them down is to bring down the whole rotten system.