Issue: 2078
Dated: 24 Nov 2007
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As the vultures circle around Northern Rock the government seems set to feed them with billions of pounds from the public purse.
Postal workers have only a few days remaining in which to vote on the deal negotiated by the leaders of the CWU union to end their dispute over pay, modern-isation and pensions.
Post workers in Coventry are furious at plans unveiled by Royal Mail to close their mail centre and cut hundreds of jobs.
Last Saturday Over 400 people attended the remarkable Media Workers Against The War (MWAW) "The First Casualty? War, Truth and the Media Today" event.
On the surface of it, giving all young people not only the right but the obligation to stay on in education or training until 18 could be seen as the liberal educationalist’s dream.
PCS ballot over jobs and pay The ballot of 80,000 PCS civil service workers’ union members in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over strike action against the threatened imposition of a below inflation pay offer ends on Monday of next week.
The Human Tissue and Embryology Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords on Monday of this week. The bill has opened up the possibility of the law on abortion being amend.
Around 250 people gathered at the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in London last Saturday. They heard from speakers including Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and union leaders Mark Serwotka, Matt Wrack and Joe Marino.
Around 165 people participated in "The Great Aviation Debate" organised by Manchester Climate Forum on Thursday of last week.
A planned strike of around 2,000 bus workers at the East London Bus Group due to take place on Wednesday was suspended at the last minute after management made an improved pay offer. The offer will be put to the drivers to decide whether or not to accept it.
Over 500 taxi drivers in Dundee struck last weekend as part of their long-running dispute with Dundee council.
Refuse collectors in Eastleigh in Hampshire held two more one day strikes over working conditions on Friday of last week and Monday of this week.
Some 150 Unison union members and supporters demonstrated outside East Ham Town Hall in Newham, east London.
Members of the national executive of the University and College Lecturers Union (UCU) in further education met last week to discuss action over pay.
Islington’s Lib Dem council leader James Kempton is determined to close Islington Green school in north London and reopen it as an academy.
Teachers in England and Wales look set to have their pay held down to a 2 percent "rise" each year for the next three years.
Over 200 people attended a protest in Blackpool against a British National Party (BNP) conference held in the town last Saturday.
Students, local residents and trade unionists in Oxford are joining forces to protest against the Oxford Union debating society’s decision to host an evening headlined by two Nazis – Nick Griffin and David Irving – on Monday of next week.
It was a good day for anti-fascists in the West Midlands on Wednesday of last week.
Around 270 day centre workers in Glasgow are entering their seventh week of indefinite strike action.
Now is the time! And Monday 19 November was the time in Cambridge for the 130 people who packed into the Romsey Labour Club for the Cultures of Resistance fundraiser in aid of the SW appeal.
Over 250 people attended a Glasgow public meeting on Tuesday of last week, in support of human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar.
The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are producing unease in the army.
Glasgow and Strathclyde university Stop the War groups mobilised to oppose US ambassador Robert Tuttle’s visit to Glasgow University last Wednesday.
Anti-war campaigners from across the globe are heading to London on Saturday 1 December to attend the World Against War conference, organised by the Stop the War Coalition.
"This is our one and only chance to stand firm for ourselves," said striker Euana Campbell, addressing a crowd of about 150 strikers and supporters gathered in Glasgow’s St Enoch Square. "If we don’t stand up now, we will have to accept whatever the council throws at us. Cuts like this are happening across councils, the public service, and the NHS. We need to show people what can be done if we stand together. We need to show that we can win! We are fighting for our future, and we shall not be moved!"
Evidence that the government plans to extend the privatisation of the NHS emerged last week, just as health secretary Alan Johnson was telling the media that many private contracts were to be withdrawn.
Solidarity is pouring in for mental health strikers in Manchester who are fighting for the reinstatement of their union branch chair Karen Reissmann.
A major battle is underway in France. The newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy and his right wing government have launched a wave of attacks on workers and students.
Students across France have been occupying their universities and protesting against the government’s LRU laws that introduce the market into university management.
Protesters continue to defy brutal state repression in Pakistan.
Thousands of protesters converged in South Korea’s capital Seoul on Sunday 11 November for the biggest demonstration in recent years. The protests had three focuses:
In a recent article in The Guardian, Scottish journalist Iain MacWhirter noted Gordon Brown’s "apparent capitulation to neoconservatism" and asked what might have happened if Brown had taken a different path.
It is two years since the book was first launched. It sold out very fast and a second edition has just been published. Some large meetings and campaigns have been organised around the book. Why do you think it touched a nerve?
Tory leader David Cameron last week used the low conviction rate for rape as an excuse to condemn the "moral collapse" of British society. This is the latest way that Cameron has tried to tap into a feeling of social crisis.
The US government is planning to take its "war on terror" into new territory – Africa. Plans to establish a network of US-friendly military bases and a cross-continent command structure are well underway.
‘The US claims that Somalia is the "third front" in the "war on terror". It supported the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006, saying that it was saving ordinary people from a form of "Taliban rule" by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which had transformed the country into a "haven for Al Qaida".
The British economy had such a hunger for labour in the long economic boom after the Second World War that government ministers were sent abroad to find workers.
Some 350 delegates and observers gathered to discuss the way forward at Respect’s fourth annual conference, held at the University of Westminster in central London.
Chairing the final session Tower Hamlets Respect councillor Oliur Rahman took an emergency motion from Preston Respect on the crisis in Pakistan which condemned General Musharraf’s regime.
Dan Allen, a rail worker in Canterbury and Coastal Respect, was pleased that the organisation is looking forward. "In Whitstable, Kent, we’ve been campaigning against the closure of the job centre," he said.
George Galloway and his supporters launched a new organisation, Respect Renewal, at a rally on Saturday organised in opposition to the official Respect delegate conference.
The influence of Latin America on dance music is enormous – the dominance of percussion and the use of brass instruments for rhythm became a major contributor to both funk and later disco.
The El Barrio series collects salsa music from the 1960s and 1970s. This latest album concentrates on the period of revolutionary action after 1968.
Journalists, we are told, must be impartial. Photojournalists are no exception. Both are trained not to get emotionally involved in the stories they cover in case they allow their feelings to affect their work.
Gordon Brown’s recent promise of "British jobs for British workers" has reignited the debate about immigration. The right wing press is repeating tired headlines about Britain being overcrowded. The fascists will try to exploit those headlines to target vulnerable migrants.
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