Issue: 2122
Dated: 11 Oct 2008
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This week our front page declares "capitalism isn’t working" – a subversion of the Tories’ 1979 "Labour isn’t working" election poster that reflected anger at growing unemployment.
Abortion rights campaigners are mobilising to stop the continuing attacks on a woman’s right to choose in Britain. They are also fighting to get those rights extended.
The economic crisis is having a major effect on the ability of graduates to pay back their student loans.
Universities and colleges have become sites of debate and discussions as tens of thousands of students question the basis of society in the face of deep economic turmoil.
Britain is the fifth richest country in the world. Yet one in three children in Britain is growing up in poverty – and their numbers are growing.
Imagine paying a mortgage for years and then being forced to hand your home back to the bank for no money, while you and your family are made homeless.
The financial crisis is spreading into the real economy and is set to hit already hard-pressed working class people even harder.
Every year in late September I get a flurry of emails from council officials telling me that October is Black History Month and that a number of events are taking place to celebrate it. These are typically accompanied by flyers featuring pictures of Mary Seacole or Nelson Mandela.
Up to 200 people attended a meeting to launch the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (Call) on Tuesday of last week.
Up to 300 people attended a lobby called by Nottingham Trent University UCU union branch on Monday of this week. They were demanding that management’s threat to derecognise the lecturers’ union is lifted.
Parkwood School Anti Academies Alliance campaigners from around the country were out canvassing parents in Sheffield last Saturday, arguing for a no vote in a council ballot over whether Parkwood School should become an academy.
Over 2,000 Kirklees Unison members met last week at Huddersfield football stadium to discuss the council’s proposals on single status.
The leadership of the Unison union in local government met last weekend but failed to have a proper debate over the decision to go to binding arbitration over the pay claim covering workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Unite union is to ballot its members in the NHS to strike over pay. The ballot will open on 28 October and close on 12 November. Members will be asked to vote on strike action and on industrial action short of strike action, with a recommendation to vote yes to both questions.
The ballot of 270,000 members of the PCS civil service workers’ union to strike over below-inflation pay is into its second week, and activists are reporting a good response to the union’s campaign.
The NUT teachers’ union began balloting its 250,000 members on Monday of this week. The ballot is for national strike action against a below-inflation, three-year pay deal.
Further education lecturers in the UCU union are currently balloting over whether to accept a below-inflation pay offer.
Around 40 people protested on Sunday 28 September in support of the campaign by the family of Gary McKinnon to prevent his extradition to the US on charges of hacking into Pentagon computers.
Over 100 people demonstrated in Huntingdon last Saturday against plans to hand over management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital to a private company.
The West Midlands Fire Authority is trying to close down the region’s only retained fire station. The station, at Sedgley, is the most cost-effective in the region and deals with 800 calls a year.
Members of the Usdaw union working at the bookmakers Ladbrokes call centre in Aintree held a second 24-hour strike last Sunday to protest against their below-inflation pay offer of 3 percent.
There was anger last week after ITV News announced cost-cutting plans to slash over 400 workers across its regional services.
Postal Workers at Copperas Hill mail centre in LIverpool, which is earmarked for closure, refused to cross a picket line put up by striking Romec engineers on Monday of this week.
Some 500 CWU post workers’ union reps met last week for a two-day national briefing.
An emergency meeting of the national executive of the Unite union was to be held this Thursday. The meeting was to consider two proposals by the joint general secretaries, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley.
Around 450 rail signallers and signal supervisors in the RMT transport union began the first of two 24-hour strikes at 12 noon on Tuesday of this week.
Council workers in Scotland have been offered an additional 0.5 percent pay rise this year – but at the price of accepting a two-year deal.
While bus workers’ lives are dominated by the stress of living on low pay and working long hours, private bus operators are reaping in record profits.
Up to 6,000 London bus workers across different companies will strike over pay on Friday of this week. This will be followed by an even bigger strike on
While Gordon Brown rushed to guarantee the savings of the tiny minority who have over £35,000 stashed in a bank, millions of us were lying awake worrying about our jobs, homes, pensions and how we can afford to put food on the table.
The Metropolitan Police Service has been plunged into crisis after Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s commissioner and Britain’s most senior police officer, was forced to resign by London mayor Boris Johnson.
Gordon Brown’s spin doctors rushed to proclaim that Peter Mandelson’s shock return to the cabinet last week underscored the prime minister’s "pro-business" stance at a time of growing economic turmoil.
It’s official – the occupation of Afghanistan is "doomed to fail". That stark warning comes from the top British commander and the top British diplomatic envoy to Afghanistan.
Hundreds of students and activists are marching on the Bank of England at 4pm today to protest against the massive bailouts financial institutions have received.
More than 5,000 London bus workers struck today over pay. The drivers at First Group and Metroline took action as part of a campaign by the Unite union to win a wage of at least £30,000 for drivers across all companies in London.
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Several hundred students and other activists brought the City of London to a standstill in a flash protest on Friday evening.
Initially many establishment figures in continental Europe thought they could ride the global financial crisis out. This was, they said, a problem generated by "Anglo-Saxon" free market capitalism that had nothing to do with the well-regulated economies of the euro-zone.
No coal plus no nuclear equals no lights. No power. No future." This was the claim made by former business secretary John Hutton at the recent Labour Party conference.
The fact that climate change is threatening the existence of our planet is one of the strongest indictments of the capitalist system.
The crisis ripping through financial markets means that thousands of people are asking whether there is an alternative to the current system – and what that alternative might be.
On 7 February 1941 an editorial entitled "The American Century" appeared in Life Magazine signed by its founder and publisher, Henry Luce. It argued that the US had missed its chance at the end of the First World War to mould the world around its economic and social model.
With capitalism appearing to collapse all around us today even some right wing commentators have been forced to admit that Karl Marx might have been right about the crisis-ridden nature of the system.
What happened over the last week?
Sunshine is a three part comedy drama.
Long before he helped invent funk in the mid 1960s, James Brown had already done more than most to put the music of black America on the jukeboxes of white teenagers.
The latest album from Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) combines punk, hip-hop and bhangra to create an invigorating sound.
Activist and comedian Mark Thomas’s new book Belching Out The Devil chronicles the growing campaign against Coca-Cola’s activities around the world.
You would think that the middle of an economic crisis would be the worst time to argue to lift the cap on top-up fees for students.
It would cost roughly $375 billion to clear the debt of the world’s 49 poorest countries and $2.9 trillion to end all "Third World debt", according to Jubilee Debt Campaign figures.
An intractable economic crisis. A discredited Labour government. A pervasive sense of bitterness, anger and fear across the working class. It’s no wonder that many commentators are comparing current events with those of the late 1970s.
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