Last week in politics: NHS winter crisis, rail fare increase and the middle east

POLITICS this last week has been relatively quiet as parliament hasn't yet, but notably the year started badly for commuters and workers alike. This was after rail fares were increased by around 3.4% on average and with wage increases below the 3% inflation mark, which results in a decrease, this will see those who require daily train travel worse off. Furthermore, Jeremy Hunt admitted that the NHS was currently experiencing a winter crisis after adamantly denying it on BBC’s Newsnight.

Meanwhile, the US have continued their destructive rhetoric over the middle-east by withholding funding from the UN that goes to the Palestinian people as aid and wading in like a bull in a China shop over Iran.

UK politics

The start of the year saw rail fares increase by 3.4% on average and season tickets rose by 3.6%, analysis by the Labour party said the average season ticket would cost £2,888 – £694 more than in 2010 – a rise of more than 30%. In a different analysis by the TUC, they revealed that British rail users are spending a higher proportion of their salary on rail fares than their European counterparts. The TUC’s figures used the example of a season ticket to London from Chelmsford in Essex, which had risen to £381 a month,13% of average London salaries. In contrast, it said, a comparable commute of about 30 miles in France would cost 2% of an average salary, 3% in Italy, 4% in Germany and 5% in Belgium and Spain.

Growing numbers of hospitals are struggling to cope with the onset of the NHS’s winter crisis, with one A&E doctor apologising to patients for the “third world conditions” in his overcrowded unit. Jeremy Hunt went on Newsnight and championed the governments tired rhetoric that the NHS is receiving ‘more funding than ever’ and claimed there was no winter crisis, however, the next day he unwittingly admitted to a crisis in a tweet the next day. Many hospitals are buckling under the strain despite intensive NHS-wide planning for a winter that bosses have long feared would be particularly difficult.

News of the world

Iran has been the focus of the West since minor protests broke out over the government’s economic policy, but Western media has laboured to uphold an appropriately reductionist view of Iran, a country that has long been in US crosshairs for its insistence on challenging imperial designs on the region.

But looking further into the issues of Iran only continues to highlight the complexities of the issues, however, Western media has largely attack Jeremy Corbyn over his silence on the issue.

This stance should be praised or much like Theresa May’s silence on the very same issue, ignored. but, some accuse Corbyn of being the stooge of the mullahs. Some say he is a hypocrite. Others alleged that he took money from the Iranian government after appearing on its Press TV channel. But Corbyn's display of silence, bear in mind his response would lose him no votes, is a display of principle that is rarely seen in politics these days.

The fact is Peter Oborne, a staunch Conservative, writes in the Middle Eastern Eye “Corbyn's principled silence is prudent and sensible.

It reflects the fact that at this stage we simply don't know for certain what is going on inside Iran.”

There have been reports that The United States has frozen $125 million in funding for a UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees, Axios news site reported on Friday, but a State Department official said no decision had been made on the payment. This wouldn’t be the first time that the US have systemically denied Palestinian's desperately needed aid money after The United States had cut off funds to UNESCO as a punitive action after the Palestinian Authority was accepted into the UN agency as a full member in defiance of American, Israeli and European pressure in 2011.

Subsequently, in 2013, American influence in culture, science and education around the world took a high-profile blow after the US automatically lost voting rights at UNESCO after missing the crucial deadline to repay its debt to the world's cultural agency. The move to freeze the $125 million shows that America are still pursuing the colonist goal of eradicating Palestine in favour of the fascist, colonist government of Israel.