Official report attacks PFI schemes
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee have issued a report which comes as close as they dare to damning the
Private Finance Initiative (PFI) approach used over the last decade or so to
fund public projects.
Britain
London Met: A laboratory for conservative education policies?
Socialist Appeal recently met up with Claire Locke, president of
London Met SU, to discuss the cuts taking place at London Metropolitan
University and the fightback against them Claire described
how the Tories are conducting a class war at the University. They are
cutting humanities, arts and student support at the same time as
strengthening the business ties of the university.
Editorial: Tory Britain in crisis
The Tories are on the rampage. Their response to the worst riots in
living memory is more state repression. The blame for the riots,
according to David Cameron, lies with the “criminal disease” sweeping
our neighbourhoods.Cameron also attacked the “moral collapse,” the breakdown of “family
values,” poor standards in schools, and a welfare system that rewards
the idle.The Tories’ answer, as always, is tougher rules on benefits claims, the
introduction of National Service, more discipline in schools, ending the
human rights culture, and the introduction of “family tests.”
UK riots: Bosses’ justice?
As Britain prepares for the possibility of new outbreaks of rioting this
weekend, the courts have been hard at work dispensing bosses’ justice
to those unfortunates picked up by the police in the wake of the
disturbances over the last few days.
UK Riots: Crackdown will solve nothing
As expected the state is warming to the task of cracking down hard, as they like to put it, on looters/rioters past, present and future. Cameron and May have been strutting around talking tough about what they are going to do.
UK Riots: Strange mood hits the streets
As the day moves on a strange mood has hit the streets and estates of London. Traffic has started to die down and shops are being boarded up. Yet families are walking around as if nothing is happening. Stories of likely flash points are being banded around. Indeed police have just advised people in the building where our print offices are based to lock up and stay indoors as a riot is "expected shortly" in the street outside.
The riots in Britain: a warning to the bourgeoisie
The riots in Britain are only a symptom of a general crisis of capitalism. The Marxists will not join with the bourgeoisie and its agents in their hypocritical chorus of denunciation. Our duty is to find a road to the youth, to help them to find the right road – the revolutionary road, the road to the socialist reconstruction of society.
Tottenham Riots: A community on the edge
Burning cars, broken glass, looting and an entire community enraged at the violent actions of those who are supposed to protect them. This describes the situation not in Greece or 80s Liverpool, but Tottenham, London on 6th August 2011. In this article we look at the background to these events demonstrate the underlying cause lies in the crisis of capitalism.
London riots reveals society’s decay
The riots which started in the Tottenham area of North London on
Saturday night and which have since spread to many others parts of the
capital have exposed the social decay within the city as we enter the
final year before the start of the prestige Olympics.
Defend the union link
If the report in Today’s edition of the Guardian (click here
to read it) is to be believed it seems that the Labour leadership has
decided to ignore any of the good stuff which may have come out of the
Refounding Labour consultation exercise and instead dig up some old
Blairite/New Labour garbage. Yet again, they want to dilute the union
presence in the party decision making process. Given that the mood in
the movement is for a more powerful annual conference rather than the
jamboree it became under Blair, Ed Miliband has offered up some
‘reforms’ of his own.
EDL march in Cambridge – the Labour movement responds in numbers!
Saturday the 9th of July saw the arrival of the EDL (English Defence
League) to the centre of Cambridge to protest against the proposal to
build a new mosque on Mill Road, a vibrant and multi-cultural part of
the city. The events in Cambridge were part of a national day of action
by the EDL that saw around 150 members of the EDL march through Plymouth
only to find them met by around 300 anti-fascist demonstrators,
alongside a demonstration in Middlesbrough that saw around 200 EDL
protestors met by 400 anti-fascists and a demonstration in Halifax that
numbered around 450 EDL demonstrators and 200 anti-fascists. Various
other EDL divisions were also planning on marching through Liverpool,
Dagenham and Derby however these marches were cancelled due to the high
level of opposition by the local community.
NoW Scandals: the ugly face of capitalism
The phone-hacking scandal that has led to the closure of the News of the
World newspaper has brought to the surface the real state of things
within the British establishment. The rottenness of a regime,
that prides itself at being a model of “democracy,” is now out in the
open for all to see. What has now been revealed is that a powerful media
empire that for years has played a key role in British politics, making
and unmaking political leaders, has been buying police officers, using
influence with politicians, and all this peppered with out and out
criminal activity.