Blog

This morning a group of mostly rich countries used the World Economic Forum in Davos to call for negotiations on digital trade. This is ‘next big thing’ in trade talks: trying to create global rules to govern rapidly increasing online trade and accompanying flows of data (the so-called ‘oil’ of the new economy).

Brexit, Trump, trade wars, climate catastrophe, creeping fascism. Fear of what the future holds was never far from the minds of global justice campaigners in 2018. But the only way to build a better future is to organise and campaign – to light a candle rather than curse the darkness.  

I open the curtains to see fairy lights twinkling in my neighbour’s house. I open the kitchen door and see little crumbs on the table, traces of a mince pie eater. And then I open Facebook to see the annual arguments about blackface. Yep. It’s nearly Christmas.

It’s good news for the NHS and patients. After years of big pharma having patent control over a medicine and hiking up its price extortionately, a drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, adalimumab, is being replaced with much cheaper alternatives.

I rebelled this Saturday. The plan was to block five London bridges and get dozens of people arrested as a way of growing the movement against climate change. Thousands of people came out across London as part of Extinction Rebellion. People had travelled from all over the country and for many of them it was the first time they’d taken part in civil disobedience.