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New Labour immigration minister Lord Rooker congratulated the government last week for driving away refugees fleeing poverty and persecution. Vicious measures have stopped people finding safety in Britain. A glance at those who do make it shows that it is the most desperate people who try to get here.

Imagine some New Labour minister, press puppet or government geek steps up at a press conference and makes a statement: "Our job in education has always been seen as raising standards. This remains absolutely and unequivocally our policy. To bring this about, many ways have been tried-hiring extra staff, putting money into schools in areas where there is poverty, and supporting children with special needs, whether those are due to deprivation, disability or speaking another language. Sometimes what's been tried is ending the way children are selected for this or that school, or this or that stream. The idea here was that we would treat school students as people who would discover their

Postal Workers will hold a national demonstration in a week's time. Thousands will march through London protesting at plans to hand over the mail to private firms. This is a great chance to take the anger against privatisation and the rundown of public services onto the streets.

Teachers in London have voted overwhelmingly to strike on Thursday of next week over pay. Over 40,000 members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in London and neighbouring areas of the Home Counties voted by nine to one to strike in a ballot declared on Tuesday of this week.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of John Steinbeck. He is one of the US's most passionate, poetic and socially conscious writers. His novels often give voice to those denied it, especially in the Depression years before World War Two in the US. His stories are those of the dispossessed.

"We're not militant, but now it's come to the crunch. We've finally had enough, and we're fighting." That's how medical secretary Susan Mann summed up the mood on an angry and lively picket line outside Sunderland Royal Hospital on Tuesday of this week. She was one of 90 low paid women health workers on the picket line at the start of their three-day strike. All of them had the same message. They are fed up of being treated like low paid dogsbodies. Medical secretaries across the north east of England have been fighting to win a higher grade and better pay.

Birmingham council tenants are being asked to hand control of their homes to the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Labour-run city council was meeting on Tuesday of this week to give the final go-ahead to a ballot starting on 18 March over the plan to privatise over 80,000 council homes.

"The real John Nash Jr was schizophrenic, and he did win the Nobel Prize, but that's where the similarity ends". So said a mathematician discussing A Beautiful Mind on the radio. Most biopics I've seen are either wildly inaccurate, boring, or so whitewashed as to strip the humanity out of their subject. This one falls in to the first and last categories, while also managing to be boring.

Thousands of people are dying unnecessarily because waiting times for NHS cancer treatment are getting longer. A key reason is the shortage of radiologists in the NHS. A third of people who train never enter the profession because the pay is so bad.

Saturday's protest to stop the war was big, loud, young and militant. A brilliant 20,000 marched through London streets. Banners and placards called for peace, and branded George Bush a war criminal.

The Liberal Democrats are turning to the right. A policy review pushed by leader Charles Kennedy is set to recommend more use of PFI schemes and private firms to run schools and hospitals. It says PFI is helpful for bringing "more private sector management know-how into public service provision".

Half a million Italians demonstrated in Rome last Saturday against the right wing government of millionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi. The demonstration was organised by the Democratic Left party and its allies in the Olive Tree coalition. The Democratic Left is a part of the old Communist Party that adopted policies similar to the British Labour Party.