March 2008

Scroungers? According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, 57% of households below the poverty line had someone in work. Half of the UK’s child poverty is in wage earning families. Capitalism causes poverty.

Haiti’s poor forced to eat mud. As food prices soar, the poor can’t afford a bowl of rice any more. So they make up biscuits from clay, mixed with water, salt and margarine. They bake them in the sun and eat them. At least you don’t feel as hungry.

Ama Sumani was deported to Ghana in a wheelchair by immigration authorities. Cancer sufferer Ama was shipped out of the University Hospital of Wales to what friends described as a death sentence. That’s what you get for overstaying your visa. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British!

‘Agency nurses on £120 per hour’ screams the London Metro. Of course the workers don’t get all that money. But isn’t that a monumental cost to us for incompetence by NHS management?

On Thursday, 6th
March, supporters of Hands Off Venezuela at the University of East Anglia had an emergency resolution to the National Union of Students passed calling for
affiliation to the HOV campaign. This motion will be sent to
NUS conference on April 1st-3rd, opening the prospect of
the whole of the NUS (which comprises something like 4
million students) affiliating to HOV. This will give the campaign a massive
boost in the UK and in Venezuela.

The government has a good scam going on rising prices. They’re trying to hold public sector pay down to 2.1%, which is the rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Prices Index. But if you measure inflation by the Retail Prices Index (another official government index) prices have gone up by more than 4% over the past year.

Last month the National Union of Teachers’
Executive announced a ballot for a 24 hour strike on 24th April for
all school-based members. The ballot is currently underway, having started on
February 24th and will end on 31st March.

Whatever happened to Women’s liberation?

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. Although governments and political parties around the world pay lip service to women’s liberation, the liberation of women remains elusive. Barbara Humphries, long-term labour movement activist and Marxist, spoke on Wednesday evening at the ULU Marxist Society on the origins of International Women’s Day, the necessity for capitalism to divide society on the basis of sex and how the emergence of class society made women second-class citizens.

On February 23 three comrades of the
International Marxist Tendency attended the Republican Socialist Youth
Movement’s (RSYM) winter day school in Belfast. Jim Daly, Sean McGowan and
Bernadette McAliskey spoke on various aspects on the question of Republicanism
and Socialism and the role of the working class. Francesco Merli spoke on
Venezuela. There was keen interest in the ideas of Marxism and the school bodes
well for the development of the RSYM.

From LabourNet : People may be aware that UNISON HQ has ruled that Karen Reissmann can not stand for re-election to their seats to UNISON’s
Health Service Group Executive.
Karen was excluded because she was sacked by her Trust in the run up to
the election and was therefore not working in the health service!