TONY BLAIR wants an elite of 3,000 top civil servants to double their pay to £180,000. But he is fighting hard to keep rail workers and postal workers on poverty pay. He has denounced the rail workers' strikes for decent pay. The Post Office, run by the government, has offered a rise of 2 percent, 70p a day, to 150,000 Royal Mail workers.
THE TREATMENT of Zimbabwean asylum seekers has underlined the inhuman way Britain treats refugees. For months, while top government figures denounced Zimbabwe's human rights record, Zimbabwean asylum seekers were sent back to torture and death. Now, after an intense campaign and under huge pressure, the government says it will temporarily halt deportations to Zimbabwe.
THE SCOTTISH Executive this week looked set to delay its introduction of free personal care for the elderly for three months. The executive was meant to introduce free personal care this April. Now its introduction could be delayed until the autumn.
DO YOU want your local hospital run by management consultants like PriceWaterhouseCoopers or KPMG? That is the logic of the plans announced by health secretary Alan Milburn this week.
OVER 140,000 people are convicted of drug offences in Britain every year. Most of them do not receive the kid glove treatment Prince Harry got. About three quarters of those convicted are charged with cannabis possession-the offence Prince Harry has admitted to.
"TUITION FEES are to stay." So reported the Mirror newspaper this week. The government said it would review tuition fees after it admitted it was one of its most unpopular polices. The results of the review are due at the end of this month.
DOMESTIC politics have returned powerfully to the United States, as further revelations have come out over the collapse of energy giant Enron. As Socialist Worker showed in its 8 December issue, the scandal will reverberate for a long time to come.
THE TUC has forecast that 150,000 manufacturing jobs will be slashed in 2002. This week Marconi, the giant telecoms group, was threatening to slash 4,000 jobs worldwide. That could mean over 1,000 workers in Britain are set to lose their jobs, on top of the 3,000-plus jobs Marconi has already slashed.
AROUND 70 people joined a Marxist forum on "Women's liberation in the 21st century" in Manchester at the weekend. Sheila Rowbotham, a leading socialist feminist writer, joined Lindsey German, author of Sex, Class and Socialism, to lead off the forum. After a question and answer session with the speakers the forum broke into discussion groups. Maryam Choudhary, a further education student in Manchester, brought her friend Kate from college: "If you ask people to come they will. I wasn't apprehensive about it at all. It was really good to hear everyone else's views, not just the views of our teachers."
AROUND 150,000 Royal Mail workers are voting on a national strike over pay. At present their basic pay is around £250 a week before tax. Royal Mail bosses want them to accept a pay deal worth just 2 percent. Hard-working people, many working outdoors in all weathers and early in the morning, have been offered just £5 a week.
"WE WILL never give up fighting to find out who killed my brother, Roger Sylvester. We have found out that the police, judiciary and Crown Prosecution Service all work together to protect a system of injustice" said Bernard Sylvester. He spoke out as over 100 people joined a candlelit vigil on Friday of last week called by the family of Roger Sylvester, a young black man who died in police custody three years ago.
