Cornwall
Determined strikers picketed the entrances to New County Hall and Old County Hall, two major local government workplaces in Truro, from 7.30am.
Norwich
There were pickets at City Hall, Country Hall, the library and other key workplaces. Pickets were pleased that some people who had planned to go in were turned around. At City Hall a post office delivery van was also turned back.
The Tory led Local Government Association, representing all councils across England and Wales plus a list of other key local authority and professional organisations, has endorsed the Defend Council Housing’s key demands in a new hard hitting report.
Street sweepers, school cooks, refuse workers, teaching assistants and the hundreds of thousands of other people doing vital jobs in local councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are gearing up to take on Gordon Brown’s pay curbs with two days of strike action on 16 and 17 July.
Gordon Brown, chancellor Alistair Darling, and Bank of England governor Mervyn King lined up last week to deliver pious lectures on why workers must accept wage cuts to help stop inflation.
Spiralling food and fuel prices across the world hit home this week as the Bank of England announced that the government’s preferred inflation measure had climbed above the 3 percent barrier.
Schools secretary Ed Balls has threatened that hundreds more schools could be turned into academies or private trust schools. He has identified 638 "failing schools" – one in five secondary schools in England – which could be targeted for academy status.
‘Rising energy and import prices will almost certainly push inflation up further, possibly significantly, in the coming months.’ Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England
