In-depth analysis

Private jet

Ban private jets!

Private jets are something like ten times more carbon-emitting than normal commercial flights and fifty times more than trains. They are a significant part of the reason that half the emissions from aviation are caused by the activity of 1% of the world’s population - almost entirely the extremely wealthy.

Despite European governments’ professions of concern about climate change, private jet flights taking off in Europe increased by 64% last year, with emissions from them more than doubling to over 3m tonnes of CO2.

trade union official

The working-class struggle and union officialdom

A strike wave started in June 2022 as workers strove to match wages to prices, especially of food and energy, rising much faster than at any time since the early 1990s.

With unemployment low as bosses hired anew for post-lockdown expansion, workers also sought to reverse the decline in real median weekly wages from economic crash and then austerity since 2008. Public-service wages had declined particularly, being only 1% higher than private-sector wages (for comparable qualifications, age, etc.) in 2022 where they were 7% higher in 2011.

Israel and Ukraine flags

Ukraine, Israel and the left

Solidarity has long argued that sections of the left have fallen into particular form of antisemitism. Starting from ultra-hostility to Israel which goes beyond criticising the real misdeeds of its governments and into demonising it as the world’s hyper-imperialism and hyper-racism, they end up reflexively hostile to all “Zionists”, i.e. all Jews who have some default or instinctive affinity with Israel, however critical.

Readers who wonder why should look at how the same sections of the left portray the war in Ukraine.

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