Afrasiab Anwar, one of 11 councillors to resign, was among those who earlier asked party leader to step down
The leader of Burnley borough council has resigned along with 10 other councillors in protest at Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Afrasiab Anwar, who has been a member of the party for a decade, was among those who called for the Labour leader to step down last week.
Continue reading...Kelsey Devlin’s family in Burnley had concerns for her welfare and want transparency over how she died
The prime minister of Pakistan and Boris Johnson have been asked to intervene in the case of a British woman who died in Pakistan, with MPs and her family calling for transparency over the circumstances.
Kelsey Devlin, a 27-year-old carer and mother of two from Burnley in Lancashire, died on 30 June in a hospital in Rawalpindi. A death certificate says the previously healthy young woman died of sepsis, a stroke and cardiopulmonary arrest, but her family in Burnley say they were concerned about her welfare in Pakistan before her death.
Continue reading...Donna, 42, was a devoted and popular member of the teaching staff. Yet at the height of the second wave, working conditions left her terrified of doing the job she loved
The joke went: it was impossible to get Covid at Burnley College. The virus didn’t exist there. All through September, October, November and December 2020, as more and more people came down with Covid yet the further education (FE) college stayed open, Donna Coleman would make this gag to her sisters, Steph Coleman, 38, and Vicki Coleman, 45. She spoke to them on the phone every day. “It was a running joke,” Steph says. “‘Who’s come down with Covid now?’”
Although the sisters laughed about it, in truth they were alarmed. Donna was a member of the teaching staff at the college in Lancashire. She worked with teenagers who had been kicked out of school, as well as long-term unemployed people, helping them to continue their education or find work. (Steph and Vicki had previously worked at the college, too, although they had left by September 2020.)
Continue reading...Pastor Mick Fleming has devoted all of his time in this lockdown to supporting the poorest communities in Burnley. But his life hasn’t always been this way. He tells us how he swapped a life of crime for delivering food parcels seven days a week, holding funerals for free and counselling people through drug relapses. He says the suffering of the poorest people in his town should make society deeply uncomfortable
Mick's Church on the Street charity: https://www.cots-ministries.com/