A&E nurses should not be delivering care in hallways. The result is increased suffering

Testimony from nurses regarding the overwhelming pressure on A&E departments across the UK has rightly shocked the public and the health secretary, Wes Streeting. The alarming yet unavoidable conclusion of a new report from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is that “corridor care”, as treatment given in hallways or other unsuitable areas is known, has been normalised to a disturbing degree.

The accounts of 5,408 nurses came in response to a survey launched before Christmas to counter the lack of official data and national oversight of rising A&E pressures. It reveals the increased medical risks that follow from patients being treated away from wards , for example due to the lack of access in these spaces to supplies, including oxygen. Nurses also explained the psychological distress caused. Lack of bodily privacy, dignity and having to receive life-changing information in unsuitable conditions were among patient experiences described. Nurses reported trying to look after people in cupboards and even toilets as well as hallways. More than two-thirds said they delivered care in an unsuitable setting on a daily basis.

Responding to an article by Polly Toynbee, Prof Sophie Watson highlights the social benefits of the workplace, while Pete Dorey takes issue with ‘labour market flexibility’. Plus letters from Ian Arnott , Maddy Gray , Dr Kirstine Oswald and David Mayle

I was surprised to read such a partisan argument on working from home by Polly Toynbee, whose articles I often appreciate ( Labour has been sucked into the WFH culture war. It should know better, 14 January ). Yes, there are certainly advantages – mitigating the environmental effects of commuter travel, flexibility of hours particularly for working parents, and so on.

But it is a far more complex picture. For many people – particularly for young or single people – the workplace is an important place of social connection. It also makes possible informal connections that can enhance creativity, mitigate tensions that can arise through email communication, make possible the creation of new networks, and countless other benefits.

Under the fifth Industrial Revolution, human labour may no longer be able to bargain for a share of wealth and political power, writes Simon Steyne

Your editorials and articles about AI, including Rafael Behr’s piece ( Keir Starmer is right to gamble on an AI revolution, but it might not pay out in time, 15 January ), are thoughtful contributions to the debate about this fifth Industrial Revolution. Much of it has considered how democracies might govern AI. Little, however, has been written about the elephant in the room: how labour markets transformed by AI will affect democratic governance itself.

Since the second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the prevailing national political superstructure of industrial capitalism in the global north, apart from the interlude of European fascism, has been various forms of parliamentary democracy. Those structures developed, in large part, because organised labour could bargain with capital for a share of the wealth that human labour creates, and built political parties to represent working people’s interests. Indeed, labour-relations systems, based on freedom of association and collective bargaining, have been pillars of functioning democracies.

However, rather than creating more productive jobs, as some envisage, the AI revolution could entail a transformative reduction in work and employment that would remove capital’s reliance on human labour to produce surplus value and profit. If that leads to the demise of workers’ organisations and to further hollowing-out of the economic base of social democratic political parties, crucial questions arise. How will capital be kept under control and held to account? What will prevent the Musks of the world from achieving complete state capture? What mechanisms will be left to ensure some semblance of redistribution of the wealth created in AI value chains? And how far can incomes fall before levels of demand become unsustainably low?
Simon Steyne
Former senior adviser on fundamental rights at work, International Labour Organization

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Former Labour leader and former shadow chancellor due to be interviewed under caution following protest in London

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have agreed to be interviewed under caution by police after a pro-Palestine march in central London on Saturday.

Ten people have been charged with public order offences after protesters allegedly breached conditions as they marched through the city, allegedly breaking through a police line in the process.

Twenty others injured in violence involving National Liberation Army rebels in north-east region

More than 80 people have been killed in fighting involving rebels from the leftwing National Liberation Army (ELN) in some of the worst violence to hit the country’s north-east region in recent years.

Twenty others have been injured, according to William Villamizar, governor of North Santander, where many of the killings occurred.

President-elect says he would sign order to give company an extra 90 days to find a buyer before facing shutdown

Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to give TikTok a reprieve on its US ban, saying he would sign an executive order allowing the company an additional 90 days to find a buyer before facing a total shutdown, and proposing that the US or an American firm take a 50% ownership stake.

TikTok stopped working in the US for 170 million users late on Saturday, as the Chinese-owned short video app shut down in response to a federal ban. In a social media post on Sunday the president-elect promised he would sign an executive order after taking office on Monday.

Conservative MP who dedicated her energies to the rights of the consumer

Sally Oppenheim-Barnes, who has died aged 96, was the former Conservative minister of state for consumer affairs and a politician with an intuitive understanding of what was of concern to the public in general and her constituents in particular. She had recognised the growing importance of the rights of the customer in the booming Britain of the 1960s and on arrival in the House of Commons in 1970 immediately set about making the subject her own.

She was a bright, brash, assertive woman who made full use of three years’ Rada training for the stage and who was famed for an eye-catching wardrobe, wrist-rattling jewellery and a large helmet of blond hair that would not have been out of place on the set of Dallas. She knew what she wanted and set out to get it, and having decided on a political career (early marriage and motherhood having put paid to acting), she took advice on how to proceed.

Overwhelmed by loss but buoyed by friends and strangers alike, Angelenos who lost their homes prepare to rebuild their lives

Until last Tuesday, Ryan and Endea Marrone lived with their two young sons in Altadena, California, in a picturesque two-bedroom home tucked into the base of the San Gabriel mountains. Behind the house, Ryan, a music producer, had created a mini recording studio, where he adorned the walls with pictures that his kids drew for him. Their wooded neighborhood was tight-knit: it was a community that wasn’t populated by the ultra-wealthy, where many homeowners had lived for decades and still exchanged holiday presents and housewarming gifts.

Now, a week later, the Marrones’ home – and their surrounding neighborhood – are all ash. The only thing that remains of their house is the chimney, singed black from flames and smoke. The front steps lead to a huge, leveled expanse of charred debris. Everything, from their sons’ Legos, to a school art project, to a photo from Ryan and Endea’s first date, was completely incinerated.

President Jimmy Carter had an appreciation of the musical heritage of the south that extended beyond gospel and rock. In 1978, he and the first lady, Rosalynn Carter, held a party at the White House for the 25th anniversary of the Newport jazz festival . Carter, accompanied by Dizzie Gillespie and Max Roach, performed (what else?) Salt Peanuts.
John Keenan

Of all the compliments paid to the man from Plains, none will ring truer, nor come back to us more tellingly, over the next four years, than that of Joe Biden: “Can you imagine Jimmy Carter referring to someone by the way they look or the way they talk?”
Tom Stubbs