Agency nurses on £120 per hour
‘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?
University of East Anglia Students Union Affiliates to HoV!
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.
Gay liberation – the long battle
Last year saw the fortieth anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales – it took over a decade for Scotland and Northern Ireland to catch-up. Gay people had won the right to have sex: as long as you were both over 21, the curtains were shut, the doors closed, there was nobody else in the house and you weren’t in the armed forces. Oddly enough heterosexuals have never had to fight for this very limited privilege.
Mr Rising Price is back
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.
The NUT Strike Ballot
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.
Audio File: ULU Marxist Society – 100 years of International Women’s Day
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.
Irish Republican Socialist Youth Movement Day School
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.
Virgin protests, Reissmann, Bakhsh, democracy and Pay
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!
Editor of Marxist.com speaks at Eton
Alan Woods was invited to speak at Eton, the
most prestigious private school in Britain (known as a “public” school in
English), by the school’s Orwell Society. Alan gave a very clear explanation of
why society needs to be changed and why the only direction in can go in is
socialism. We believe the points raised and the answers given provide a very
good outline of what Marxism stands for today.
Marketing wheezes spread diseases
We are now due another flu pandemic. This is nothing to do with some
evil ‘Spooks’ style conspiracy but a fact of life. Every 37 years or
so, the flu virus mutates or morphs into a new strain that humans
haven’t suffered before. A dilemma for the State – they have spent the past decade whipping us into work, regardless of how ill we were.
Solidarity with Colombian Coca Cola Workers
The date is the
second of November 2007. Trade unionists from the Sinaltrainal food industry union walk into the central
cafeteria of the Universidad Pontificia, to find an envelope addressed to them from the Black Eagles’ Front of the
AUC, the supposedly disbanded right-wing paramilitary organization. The
contents of this letter were as follows…
Fuel Bills: Why they’re walloping you
British Gas delared record £571m profits this year. Regulator Ofgem has
claimed the energy giants are making £9 billion in windfall profits. As
soon as the government talks about a windfall profits tax or even
suggests these monster companies do something about ‘fuel poverty’ they
threaten to cut investment in clean energy. As Julia Finch (Guardian
5th March) says "Their audacity knows no bounds." Do we control them or
do they control us and the government? The case is overwhelming. We need
to take back the fuel companies into public ownership. Then we’ll pocket
the profits