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SOME 600 workers at the Scottish Agricultural College voted by 63 percent to strike over a deal that amounts to a pay freeze for most staff.

"MOST FBU members are sick to death with New Labour," says Paisley firefighter Billy Coates. "I'd say the majority in Scotland are now withdrawing from funding the Labour Party. On my station it's 100 percent."

"WILDCAT Chaos." That was the front page headline of the Daily Record, Scotland's biggest selling newspaper, on Friday of last week. It was responding to, and trying to vilify, the unofficial walkouts by hundreds of workers in Glasgow hospitals and the Glasgow underground. Clerical and administration workers in nine hospitals in North Glasgow NHS Trust, mainly women, walked out on Thursday and Friday. Around half the workers at Gartnavel Hospital had joined the strike by Monday of this week.

The anti-war message was carried to every corner of Britain by last Thursday's day of action called by the Stop the War Coalition. In towns big and small, from Cornwall to Scotland, people took to the streets to stage a wide and imaginative variety of protests against war. In at least 24 colleges students staged occupations in some of the biggest student protests seen for many years.

OVER 1,000 college lecturers, teachers and other trade unionists marched through Glasgow last Saturday demanding the reinstatement of Jim O'Donovan. Jim is the president of the college lecturers' section of the EIS education union. He was sacked from Glasgow's Central College following a campaign of victimisation against union activists by the management.

OVER 50 people attended a very moving commemoration for Surjit Singh Chhokar, who was murdered by racists over four years ago in Wishaw. Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan, SNP MSP Linda Fabiani and the family's lawyer, Aamer Anwar, addressed the commemoration.

THE SCOTTISH anti-war movement took to the streets for the first time since 28 September last Saturday.

OVER 450 people crammed into a Globalise Resistance and Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign hosted meeting on "Do we need a global intifada?" in Glasgow on Thursday of last week. The reception for Haidi Giuliani, the mother of Carlo Giuliani who was murdered by the police during the G8 protests in Genoa last year, was electric.

THE SCOTTISH National Party tacked rightwards at its conference in Inverness last week. The message from party leader John Swinney was that the SNP has evolved from a party of protest to one capable of taking power. With just seven months to go before the Scottish Parliament elections, Swinney wants to "do a Tony Blair" on the SNP.

A NEW pay deal is being put to 150 cleaners, gallery attendants, information desk staff and security staff in the PCS civil servants' union who work in the Museum of Scotland.

OVER 600 people gave a magnificent kick-off to the campaign against Israeli sporting and cultural tours on Wednesday of last week. They protested against the football "game of shame" between Scotland and Israel under-21s in Hamilton. The Scotsman reported that "300 police and 90 stewards were on duty in and around the ground, more than were used at the Champions League final."

VICTORY. That's the verdict of low paid health workers in Scotland after they took nine days of unofficial strike action. "We are over the moon with the outcome. This is a victory for all low paid workers in the NHS," said hospital porter and Unison union shop steward Bobby Reed.