Congratulations to GCSE students

Congratulations to everybody who got their GCSE results in Edmonton and across the country this week. Exams are stressful at the best of times but this year’s students have faced a historic amount of disruption to their education. The pandemic meant that for various periods of time students were learning from home, had exams cancelled or were frequently sent home from school to isolate. At the same time, the cost-of-living crisis has increased the widening attainment gap between rich and poor.

The background to students’ revision has been a country in chaos. Yet the way in which this generation of students is navigating a historically tumultuous period can’t help but give me optimism for the future. Most of all I hope that students remember that while these exam results may feel like the most important thing in their lives right now, they are not. Whatever results students get they have a future ahead of them worth fighting for.

Solidarity with Royal Mail workers

This week Royal Mail workers go on strike for better pay and conditions. They join a long list of workers including barristers and rail workers who are organising to fight against the cost-of-living crisis. These strikes have my full support and I will be attending various picket lines to show my support whenever possible.

For more than a decade pay for ordinary people has been stagnating and is now falling. At the same time bosses’ pay packets have increased at record rates.

In our economic system, which gives a few wealthy individuals the power to extract extraordinary profits from the many, the biggest force for change is the ability of workers to organise and withdraw their labour. That’s what we are seeing now.

The cost-of-living crisis is a consequence of this Government’s policy of privatising profits. The way out of this crisis ridding the country of poverty pay. That’s what Royal Mail workers and others are fighting for and they have my full support.

Raw sewage dumping a disgrace

England and Wales are the only countries in the world that have entirely privatised their water and sewage systems. We are now reaping the consequences of this extremist decision. Not only does Thames Water lose 25% of its water each day to leaks, but since 2018 it has dumped the equivalent of 57 years of raw sewage into leisure and tourism spots across London and the south.

Analysis of Environment Agency figures, obtained under Freedom of Information requests by the Labour party, shows that since 2018 raw sewage has been pumped into London’s natural environment for a total of 506,294 hours. Areas impacted include popular tourist and bathing spots such as rivers, lakes, and beaches – spoiling areas of natural beauty and risking public health. Cumulatively, this equates to a duration of 21,095 days taking place across London and polluting its environment, a damning indictment of privatisation.

The data also points to a 791% increase in the number of monitored discharge hours between 2018 and 2021. This highlights that the situation is only drastically worsening under the Tories, and a consequence of their two-thirds budgetary cut to the Environment Agency grant, which covers environmental surveillance and enforcement.

The full scale of the pollution is likely to be even greater, given that Event Duration Monitoring does not cover every permitted storm overflow.

Labour Party analysis also shows that between 2018 and 2021 there were 44,508 spill events into London’s waters. This equates to a shocking average of a sewage spill taking place every 47 minute over a 4-year period.

It’s time for this zombie government to face the facts: privatising essential public services has failed. It benefits a wealthy few but the consequences are that the public services we all use deteriorate, cost us more and fail to keep pace with modernisation efforts. The public already know this, poll after poll shows a huge majority in favour of bringing water back into public ownership. Now MPs need to listen to the public and act.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my latest update, if you have any issues that you would like to raise directly with me then please do email  edmontonconstituency@parliament.uk. I’m always happy to help whenever possible.

Kind regards,

Kate Osamor

Member of Parliament for Edmonton