World Development Movement blog

Emma Rubach. This article originally appeared in The Big Issue

There’s been a lot in the press recently about the fact Britain’s aid budget is one of the few areas of public spending not facing cuts. Despite detractors wondering how we can spend money overseas when we don’t seem to have much to spend at home, the government has been vocally proud of its commitment to helping poor countries out of poverty and to reaching the Millennium Development Goals.
 

"Maybe it's time we went the way of Egypt." This was the conclusion of a Nairobi transport worker, who took part in research into how people are responding to the latest spike in food prices. He is not alone. Researchers from the Institute of Development Studies and Oxfam found "significant anger" among many of the communities in Kenya, Bangladesh, Zambia and Indonesia that they visited in recent months.

MEPs defy financial lobbyists after campaigners across Europe take action

At the end of last week, we joined forces with other European campaigners to try and get as many people as possible to ask their MEPs to vote to start tackling food speculation. Thank you to everyone who took the action, in the end the vote went well!

I’ve become a bit of a placard and banner geek when it comes to marches and protests. Some people make exhibitions of them, I’ll just have to make do with sharing my favourite ones. This time it’s the ‘my name is Dave’ placard that was at the public sector workers’ strike on Thursday.

I still don’t see the logic in any of this:

1) Reckless banking brings about a global financial crisis
2) The banks are bailed out with taxpayers’ money
3) The public sector pays - cuts and austerity measures are enforced
4) Bankers carry on as usual

So it’s the big strike on 30 June.  Hundreds of thousands of teachers, workers and public service workers are striking to protest at the governments austerity measures.  Measures driven by a desire to pursue a neo-liberal agenda that will damage public services and open the door the door of privatisation, putting profit before people.

In solidarity with other campaigners in the global south who have been protesting against a similar western-led agenda for years, WDM will be supporting the strike. 

There are several ways to get involved all over the country:

Malaika Aleba from Alberta Canada, who spoke in London at International Stop the Tar Sands day.

Last Saturday morning I woke up with an extra spring in my step and hopped (despite the ungodly hour) onto the Oxford tube to London. Why in the world, you may be asking yourself, would a twenty-something-year-old choose to spend a Saturday morning jumping onto a bus, when she could be partaking in a myriad of other activities, such as, you know, sleeping in?