https://www.france24.com/en/business/20261013-imf-upgrades-2026-global-growth-forecast-but-war-and-debt-threaten-outlook. The #IMF prescribing its usual #medicine - calling on #countries to cut #public #spending & #borrowing, regardless of how #poor they or their people are, or how great the level of #inequality in them.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/shadow-minister-says-parents-dont-game-send-system-but-kemi-says-disabled-adults-do-game-the-benefits-system/. "A #Tory shadow minister has said that accusing #parents of 'gaming the #system' to secure #support for their #disabled #children is 'populist BS', just hours after his #leader accused many disabled #adults of doing exactly that when claiming #benefits." The #Tories are engaged in #hypocrisy on speed, & - like #Labour - are a Party of #disability #discrimination!
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/oct/04/ministers-drop-radical-plans-cut-jury-trials-outcry-lawyers-centuries-old-right-courts. This is excellent news! The plans were a disgusting #attack on our #civilrights, & ought never to have been proposed in the first place. The remedy for the backlog in the #criminal #courts is more #money & #resources for them, not attempts to deprive #defendants of their #rights!
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/free-social-care-is-coming-but-only-if-youre-over-65-government-confirms-after-burnham-speech/. So, in the world of Andy #Burnham, you'll be entitled to #free #socialcare if you're #elderly, but NOT if you're #working #age #disabled. And that's not #disability #discrimination, Mr Burnham? Really?
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/sep/28/drawing-child-attributed-edouard-manet. "A red chalk drawing of a crouching #child, spotted in a private #Italian #collection, has been attributed by an #art #historian to the #French modernist #painter Édouard #Manet. The child, whose identity has yet to be established, resembles a #street #urchin in the Manet #masterpiece The Old Musician, in which he sought to show the #humanity of #homeless & #marginalised #people."
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/major-government-workplace-health-review-has-kept-disabled-peoples-organisations-firmly-on-the-outside/. "#Disabled people’s #organisations have been kept 'firmly on the outside' of a key #Government #programme to improve #workplace #health, raising fresh questions about ministers’ commitment to co-producing disability-related #policy... The words #equality & #discrimination do not appear in the #report."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/24/nhs-integrated-care-boards-england-two-year-waiting-times-adhd-autism-assessments. That is absolutely appalling & it is grotesque #discrimination by the #NHS. Once again, those who are able to "go private" will be able to get #diagnoses for themselves or their #children with no #difficulty - but those who can't afford to do so are now faced with 2 year delays.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/23/madrid-police-teargas-protesters-disabled-woman-evicted. "There were #violent #scenes in #Madrid on Wednesday as #riot #police fought with #protesters trying to prevent the #eviction of a #disabled 87-year-old #woman from her #apartment in the El Retiro #district of the #city." The #violence was on the part of the police, using #teargas & #baton #charges - all for the sake of supporting a #landlord evicting an #elderly disabled woman from where she's lived for 71 years. This may be #legal, but it's grotesque #injustice!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/21/lib-dems-reject-ruling-transgender-people-brighton-conference. NO, Cllr. Mark Johnston from Reigate, Surrey, the #UKSupremeCourt #judgment is NOT "unassailable" - it is total, arrogant nonsense - & MUST be reversed! Only #Parliament can do that now, & that must be in the form of an #amendment to the 2010 #EqualityAct to make clear that the terms "men" & "women" include #transgender men & women, @transactualuk, @transworld, @christineburns, @HarriettMB.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/of-donald-and-diesel. "Between their direct effect on #inflation & their indirect effect on #interestrates, then, high #diesel #prices are an #economic #problem for #America & a #political problem for... #Trump. Ukraine’s strikes on #Russia are contributing to that problem. So Trump... has good reasons to want #Ukraine to stop its highly effective #air #campaign. But he neither should nor will get what he wants... You don’t get to betray a #nation, then demand that it help you politically."
https://theconversation.com/why-the-governments-debt-is-growing-current-public-spending-pressures-explained-291477. "The level of #Government #debt is at #record highs. The #US has just passed £29.6 trillion, the #UK owes around £3 trillion, #Japan £6 trillion & #France over £2.5 trillion."
https://theconversation.com/when-does-hardship-become-poverty-the-left-and-right-draw-the-line-differently-290678; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0276562426000685?via%3Dihub (open access). "Making the #poverty line explicit will not make it politically neutral or universally accepted. It might, however, reveal whether disagreement concerns the #evidence, the #policy response, or the #threshold at which #hardship becomes recognised as poverty."
https://theconversation.com/crime-is-falling-but-the-public-doesnt-feel-safer-study-finds-291197. "More than eight in ten of the #British #public really do believe that #crime has gone up in the past few years. But as a #study I was recently involved in shows, this sense of increasing #lawlessness is based on very faulty #perceptions of trends in actual crime rates." See: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/wrongful-convictions-misperceptions-of-crime.pdf.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/07/israeli-ministers-brutal-plans-palestinians-gaza. "There is a line connecting the hundreds of thousands of #Palestinians expelled or forced to flee in 1948 & today. The... carceral state that Palestinians exist in, the #destruction of their #homes & infrastructure, the #settlement & fracturing of their #territories, & the extension of #Israeli #sovereignty over them in ways that dehumanise & oppress, all serve to ensure that a future in which Palestinians are free, let alone thriving in self-governance, never emerges."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/02/50-per-cent-world-farmers-poisoned-pesticides-every-year-experts; https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1825899/full (open access). "Using publicly available #data from 2006-2023, the #study... found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute #pesticide #poisoning of #farmers & #farm #workers every year. Based on a worldwide farming population of 934 million, this means approximately 46% of farmers are being #poisoned every year. The greatest estimated number of #oisonings was in southern #Asia, followed by south-east Asia & east #Africa."
https://theconversation.com/denmark-versus-uk-which-country-gets-more-health-for-their-money-276937; https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/11/health-at-a-glance-2025_a894f72e/8f9e3f98-en.pdf. "Denmark has one of the lowest levels of #income #inequality among #OECD #countries. Almost every child between 3 & 5 years (97%) is in #professional #childcare, #university #education is free, & #Danes get up to a full year of #maternity & #paternity #leave. Danes generally benefit from high-quality #housing & safe #living environments."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/01/hasan-piker-mike-rogers-media. "Why aren’t reporters asking [Mike] Rogers whether he disavows [Lorenzo] Sewell’s description of #Islam as a 'death cult'? Why aren’t they asking whether he agrees that El-Sayed is an 'Islamic jihadist' trying to impose #sharia law on #Michigan? Why aren’t they asking him to condemn #Nazi flags at a 'Christian Crusader' rally organized by a senior #faith leader on his #campaign?"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/31/bhutan-first-conscious-food-summit-climate. "Tshering Tobgay, Bhutan’s prime minister, said: “Food lies at the intersection of many of the defining challenges of our time - #hunger, poor #nutrition, #poverty, #Climatechange, #biodiversity loss, & increasingly #food #security is also being disrupted by #conflict & #geopolitical #instability. Our central message is simple: transforming our food systems requires both inner & outer change.”