Issue: 2115
Dated: 23 Aug 2008
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Everything is going up in price. Inflation is up to 4.4 percent, even on the figures that the government uses. That’s more than twice what Gordon Brown insists public sector workers’ pay rises should be.
Health workers in the south west of England were celebrating last week after government plans for further health service privatisation were dealt a blow.
CWU union reps have reacted with outrage to the decision by Royal Mail to shut ten mail centres and axe thousands of postal worker jobs across Britain.
Bus workers at two companies owned by the First Group – First Centrewest and First Capital – have voted resoundingly for strike action over a 3.5 percent below-inflation pay offer.
Thursday 3 July was no ordinary day for the mainly migrant workers at the contractors that supply cleaning services to London Underground.
Tube cleaners are set to step up their fight for fair pay with a 48-hour strike from 5.30am on Thursday of this week.
Technicians begin rolling strikes Over 150 workers at the Nortel company in Monkstown, County Antrim, struck for half a day on Monday of this week over pay.
Postal workers in Leicester at the North Delivery Office held a gate protest on Friday of last week over the sacking of Simon Furze, their CWU rep.
The Socialist Peoples Party in Barrow will be fighting a by-election in the Newbarns ward of Barrow in Cumbria on 4 September.
Around 60 council workers in the Unison union in Haringey, north London, walked out of work on Tuesday of last week after two union activists were suspended.
Workers in East North East Homes Leeds held a successful day of strike action in defence of their Unison union convenor John McDermott, who has been suspended from work.
Baggage handlers and check-in staff working for Swissport have voted to take strike action after workers rejected a below-inflation pay offer.
Around 5,000 members of the PCS civil service workers’ union are to join the Scottish local government workers in striking over pay on Wednesday of this week.
Up to 150,000 council workers in Scotland were to stage a one-day strike on Wednesday of this week.
Up to 1,200 electricity workers in Newcastle could strike for ten days in a row over pay.
Cleaners for the Eurostar trains in London are set to strike on Monday of next week after they voted 100 percent for action over pay. They work for the OCS contractor and get just £6.37 an hour.
Over 1,000 workers in the RMT transport workers’ union at Southeastern Trains are to begin a ballot for action this week over two different issues. Almost 500 guards, drivers and customer service hosts are to be balloted over management plans to reduce the safety role of the guard and extend the driver-only operation.
This week sees a major battle on London Underground as around 1,000 maintenance workers strike over pay and conditions at the privatised Tube Lines consortium.
It is impossible to visit Bolivia and not be marked by the heady atmosphere of solidarity and popular political engagement. These elements continue to dominate the mass of the oppressed majority.
George Bush’s plans for a "missile defence shield" have already played a major part in goading Russia and destabilising the Caucasus. Now it could turn Britain into a target in any future nuclear confrontation.
Supporters of the People Before Profit Charter held a protest at St Pancras International station on Friday of last week to highlight the low pay of Eurostar cleaners, who are set to strike this Bank Holiday Monday, (see picture, page 14).
In a landmark decision, Tory-run Hammersmith & Fulham council in west London has given the go ahead for a major private housing development to be built in the White City area – scrapping plans to provide new homes for working people at "affordable" rents.
The Premier League kicked off last week. Its highest paid player, Chelsea’s Frank Lampard, has won a new contract paying him £151,000 a week, or £3,775 an hour.
Nearly sixty asylum seekers detained at the Campsfield House detention centre, in Oxfordshire, went on hunger strike last week in protest at the brutal treatment they have suffered and their looming deportations.
Over 500 anti-fascist activists and trade unionists marched in Codnor, Derbyshire, last Saturday in opposition to the British National Party (BNP) and its "Red, White and Blue" Nazi hate-fest that took place in the area.
The threat to strike by 1,000 workers at the Tube Lines consortium on the London Underground over pay and conditions this week has won a new offer from bosses as Socialist Worker went to press.
Today, in the latest challenge to Gordon Brown’s curbs on wages, over 150,000 council workers in Scotland are striking against a below-inflation three year deal.
The uprising against the Nato occupation of Afghanistan has gathered pace over the summer. Fighting has spread across a number of regions – and is now moving towards the capital Kabul.
One of George Bush’s favourite dictators fell on his sword this week. Pervez Musharraf, the former general and president of Pakistan, resigned rather than face impeachment by the country’s parliament.
British politicians love playing Winston Churchill. Tory leader David Cameron was at it last week when he flew to Georgia. According to the Guardian, Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili invited him after he compared the situation there to "the appeasement of Hitler".
Internationally the war is a big blow for the US, at least in Central Europe and the Caucasus. It has suddenly shown that the influence and control of the sole superpower is limited. There are situations when the superpower cannot protect its client states such as Georgia.
Almond argues that the Western media has tried to portray Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili as a modernising democrat.
The establishment and the media are never quite comfortable with the Notting Hill Carnival, which is held this weekend, but they are generally happy to praise it as an annual celebration of Britain’s diversity.
There is one fundamental thing that is common to capitalism in every age that makes it a uniquely violent system. It is not a marginal or accidental part of the system but something that is part of the very definition of capitalist society. That thing is competition.
The US and Poland’s leaders have escalated the militarisation of Europe and the tensions between the West and Russia.
In the Czech Republic, just as in most European countries, we have been watching television pictures of Georgia’s "brave" president Mikheil Saakashvili "defending his small country against imperial Russia".
Over the last three months, 60,000 more people in Britain have become unemployed. This massive rise takes the unemployment total to 1.67 million.
This celebration features music and food from many different cultures and traditions.
Held in a beautiful forest, this festival celebrates all things wooden.
This album is the soundtrack that Damon Albarn composed to accompany his ground-breaking opera of the same title.
"Although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to have a black President… some things will never change", argued the rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996. Twelve years on it would seem things have changed as White House braces itself for a black occupant. This change has not been lost on Nasir "Nas" Jones, one of rap music’s favorite sons.
"This is the era of the civil rights, sexual and consciousness expansion revolutions, and those are the banners under which The Fugs are going to present themselves to America."
Hammaad Munshi became the youngest person convicted under the Terrorism Act this week. He was under police surveillance from the age of 16 and was found guilty along with two other men of "making a record of information likely to be useful in terrorism".
The bosses’ Financial Times newspaper is very clear that "Team GB’s" success in the Chinese Olympics shows "you can, literally, buy gold metals". Britain’s Chinese haul of medals has come in what the paper terms "elite sports".
The spin from inside New Labour is that the party leadership accepts that it will lose the forthcoming Westminster by-election in Glenrothes to the Scottish National Party (SNP). It would be a shocking indictment of New Labour to lose yet another rock solid Labour seat.
Socialist historian, peace campaigner and Communist Party (CP) member Bill Moore died last month aged 97 after a lifetime of activity on the left.
We need renewables – not coal or nuclear The idea that "the lights will go out" unless we have the Kingsnorth power station or nuclear power is wrong.