UNISON union members in Tower Hamlets, east London, are celebrating a victory after the council withdrew proposed new sickness, disciplinary and organisational changes. This follows a highly successful strike at the end of February, and plans for further strike action.
More than 100 Express and Star journalists packed into a workplace union chapel meeting last week. We voted to take industrial action in support of our pay claim-there were ten votes against. We have agreed six separate days of action, set to start this Friday, with three-hour stoppages on each, working up to a full day's strike. The stoppages will take place from 5pm to 8pm each evening, a time designed to hit production the most.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has unleashed slaughter on the Palestinian people. Look at the pictures on this page. They show Israeli soldiers executing 23 year old Palestinian Mahmoud Salah on a Jerusalem Street on Friday of last week.
Fear and anger has swept the globe after the revelations of George Bush's latest warmongering plans. Leaks from the US military's Nuclear Posture Review show plans to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Libya. It seriously talks about more Hiroshimas, more Nagasakis, more wars which could destroy all life on the planet. And for Bush's gang it is now not a matter of if but when and how the war with Iraq will begin.
"We are falling into an abyss of murder and mayhem," the Sun newspaper screamed last week. The news is full of lurid stories about gun-toting teens and old people imprisoned in their homes by their fear of thugs. The right wing tabloids are demanding more police powers and more prisons.
Italian Prim Minister Silvio Berlusconi stands accused of letting more than 50 refugees drown when their ship sank off the ItaIian coast last week. The right wing Berlusconi is Tony Blair's closest political ally in the European Union.
Revelations about Gateshead's Emmanuel College shows where school privatisation leads. The college has been teaching fundamentalist Christian creationism and undermining the scientific teaching of biology. It hosted a conference on creationism last week, and senior staff have given lectures urging teachers to promote creationism instead of evolution.
Chris Woodhead, the former head of the Ofsted schools inspectorate, this week became the latest to try to profit from the government's drive to privatise our schools.
Will a multinational construction firm be given prime land and allowed to shut down a hospital to make way for building luxury flats and houses? New Labour health secretary Alan Milburn gave the go-ahead last month to the biggest Private Finance Initiative scheme in the NHS at east London's Royal London Hospital.
Safety campaigners are calling for an investigation into Shoreham dock, run by the Euromin firm, following a major fire there last week. The dock was where casual worker Simon Jones was killed four years ago. Last year Euromin and its manager, Richard Martell, were fined £50,000 plus £20,000 costs for breaches of health and safety law after Simon's death.
Up to 100 disabled people from Hackney, east London, held a successful rally and advice meeting on the steps of Hackney Town Hall on Friday of last week. We were protesting about the implementation of new criteria for qualifying for a "freedom pass", which enables disabled people to travel on public transport in London.
The Socialist Alliance's campaign is taking off across England in the run-up to the local elections in seven weeks on 2 May. The alliance is hoping to stand over 100 candidates in London and over 300 across England. The mood for a socialist alternative to New Labour was seen in Scotland last week. The Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance's sister organisation, won 16 percent in a local by-election.
