As the winter nights draw in, many people will be worrying about whether they can afford to pay their gas and electricity bills.
Will David Cameron be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom? With the prospect of a Tory government looming in 2010, the argument for independence is once again front page news in Scotland.
The whole neoliberal, or free market, order that has dominated the world for over 30 years was called into question when the system plunged into economic crisis in the autumn of last year.
Over the last few weeks both Labour and the Tories have announced plans to restructure education, health and social services after next year’s election.
Across Europe, racists have cheered the result of last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland, which saw a vote to impose a ban on the building of minarets on mosques.
The tabloids have greeted the news that all nurses will soon go to university by declaring we will become "too posh to wash". But such backward comments ignore the real problems with the plan.
Socialist Worker asked me to go see the new film 2012 and to use the review as an excuse to riff on climate change. So I went. At the end of the film my date said, "Good luck writing a review of that."
Nazis are again taking to the streets across Britain. They are pretending to be protesting against "Islamic extremism" – but this is a smokescreen.
The news that Britain has not escaped recession brought a deep sense of gloom to big business. It also exposed deep rifts within the ruling class over what to do next.
Noam Chomsky, publicised as the world’s greatest philosopher, addressed thousands of students in London last Thursday on the subject of Palestine in the era of Obama. The talk at the Institute of Education and sponsored by the Palestinian student society at the School of African & Oriental Studies (Soas), London University, and similar student organisations, was beamed to universities across the UK with additional links to the Middle East. It was chaired by Soas progressive scholar Gilbert Achcar and introduced by Tariq Ali.
The LGBT movement has made massive gains. A little over 40 years ago gay sex was illegal in Britain, but in 2005 we saw the first civil partnerships.
Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy cause less harm than cigarettes and alcohol. That is the simple truth.
