STOCKMARKETS were plunged into turmoil again this week. Disgraced corporation WorldCom became the biggest company failure in US history, filing for bankruptcy with debts of over $40 billion. Transport company Stagecoach has admitted accounting "irregularities" in its US operations. Wall Street, the US stockmarket, experienced its biggest collapse since the crash of 1987.
DAVID BLUNKETT'S white paper on criminal justice, introduced last week, is a full-scale onslaught on our civil liberties. The paper "was written from the point of view of a government that has decided that all those who enter a dock are bound to be guilty, and the law must be loaded to make sure they don't get away with it", said lawyer and novelist John Mortimer.
THE CROWN Prosecution Service (CPS) failed to use evidence against five police officers on trial for the killing of a black man, Christopher Alder. The five officers were charged with manslaughter and failure of duty in a public office after Christopher was unlawfully killed on 1 April 1998.
SCARE STORIES about security weakness in the event of terrorist attacks regularly hit the headlines. But Bush and Blair stood by in silence while Israel launched a ruthless terrorist attack on the Palestinians on Monday of this week.
SIR KEN Jackson's humiliation at the hands of little known left winger Derek Simpson has sent shockwaves through the political establishment. Simpson beat Jackson, the present general secretary, in the Amicus-AEEU union election.
WEDNESDAY IS market day in the commuter town of St Albans. Last Wednesday things got off to a very different start. At 6.30am council workers were not setting up the market stalls-they were on strike.
LOCAL COUNCIL chiefs placed huge adverts in national newspapers last Wednesday rubbishing the council workers' strike set for that day. Before most people got the papers council workers had already answered their employers' propaganda.
IT WAS a festival of revolt against low pay. The strike was held in the build-up to the Commonwealth Games. There was enormous bitterness that the council "are spending more on the Commonwealth Games than they are on people", as Bernard, a TGWU union member, said.
Newham I'm a road sweeper employed by an agency, and working at Newham council in east London. There are 120 of us, most on £4.80 an hour. We were told we had to go into work at the central depot at 10am. We normally start work at 7.30am.
THE LEFT of the Labour Party had a spring in its step on Saturday. Around 300 Labour Party members and trade unionists came together for a conference called "After New Labour". It was organised by the left wing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs.
WESTMINSTER council workers began an all-out strike on Monday against a major privatisation plan by their Tory council. The strike in the London council began with 77 workers in the Parking and Highways Licensing Departments striking and staging lively pickets. At least three people joined the Unison union on the picket lines in order to take part in the strike.
