CAPITALISM'S ELITE will meet in Seattle in the US next week. They will gather for the World Trade Organisation summit. Representatives of 134 countries are expected to hammer out even more favourable conditions for the multinationals. They say they just want "free trade". But on the agenda are proposals to:
DISABLED WORKERS at Remploy, the government funded company which employs disabled people, are furious that the company has trashed its promise not to close nine factories. Remploy chief Tony Withey said last week that the company will cut 913 manufacturing jobs over the next two years. This is on top of reviving old plans to shut or merge nine of Remploy's 87 factories, causing "disruption and anxiety" for at least 500 workers.
ONE OF Scotland's leading trade unionists has been expelled from his union. Roddy Slorach was thrown out of the UNISON union on Tuesday by union leaders who often claim to oppose New Labour policies. UNISON leader Rodney Bickerstaffe appears on TV attacking cuts in the public sector. The hollowness of that rhetoric is shown by his appalling treatment of Roddy.
HOME secretary Jack Straw has once more caved in to the racists over immigration. He has added still more vicious measures against asylum seekers to the Immigration and Asylum Bill, which will shortly become law. Virtually all the groups that work with asylum seekers have described measures in the bill as barbaric.
MPs TAKE home more money than 96 percent of their voters, according to research by Incomes Data Services (IDS). They now get a basic salary of over £47,000 a year, or £902 a week before tax. Most people earn between £180 and £400 a week. You get £144 for a 40 hour week - less than one sixth of an MP's earnings - if you are on the minimum wage.
TWO LEADING banks announced last week that they were sacking hundreds of workers. Shares in both Barclays and Northern Rock shot up on news of the job cuts. Some 250 Northern Rock workers and 500 Barclays workers face the misery and fear of unemployment in the run up to Xmas. Shareholders will get an Xmas bonus. In the same week Britain's fifth biggest supermarket, Somerfield, said it will sell 100 to 140 of its larger shops. It has already hived off 350 Kwik Save stores.
THE NATIONAL Health Service faces crisis this winter. Finance directors say the NHS deficit for this year is already £200 million. The total NHS debt is up to £1 billion. This means that operations are likely to be cut back as hospitals try and balance the books.
"I DON'T know much about politics. But I do know that New Labour has spent the £130 million it got from introducing student fees on underwriting arms sales to Indonesia." That is one reason Oxford University student Oliver Clueit gave Socialist Worker for why he had joined a four day occupation of one of the university's central administration buildings.
"I WAS a gardener for Greenwich council for 12 years. But I had a nervous breakdown and took redundancy. My redundancy went on the mortgage until it ran out. Then I just lost everything. They repossessed my home. My girlfriend left me. Everything went down the drain. I stayed with my parents for a while but it didn't work out. I've been homeless on and off for four years now. They attack us for taking drugs. I take drugs sometimes because it blocks it all out. Everything just gets too much." TONY, Big Issue seller, Charing Cross station
SOME 50,000 people marched in Vienna in Austria on Friday of last week in protest at the Nazi Jörg Haider. It was one of the country's biggest political demonstrations since the Second World War.
AN EXCELLENT 25 copies of Socialist Worker were sold at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley while 12 were sold at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Elsewhere 11 papers were sold at Royal Liverpool Hospital with £11 collected for the Socialist Worker Appeal. In the last week 5 people have joined the Socialist Workers Party in Birmingham; 4 at a public meeting in Hackney; 2 in Camberwell and at the University of Central England; 1 in Neath, Romford, Kent University, Toxteth, Wirral Metropolitan College and in Newcastle.
