You’ve probably never heard of Punch Taverns. But you may well have
had a drink in one of their 9,000 pubs. Chief executive Giles Thorley awarded
himself £11.3 million last. Punch Taverns
has the biggest gap between executive and workers’ pay in Britain.
Two years after the brutal shooting by police in London of Jean
Charles de Menezes, his family are no nearer
seeing anyone brought to justice. Jean was shot at least 8 times from
point blank range as he boarded a tube
train at Stockwell station in south London. We now know the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes
is considered by the British establishment as justified despite a
mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Speculation has reached fever pitch in the press over whether or not
Brown will call a snap General Election after only three months as
prime minister. With the Tories languishing in the polls, one giving
Labour an eleven percentage lead, and the government surviving the
different crises of foot and mouth, floods and the run on Northern
Rock, the young Turks of New Labour’s front bench are keen to launch an
election. However there is little enthusiasm amongst traditional Labour supporters and there are dangers of an economic crisis.
New Labour’s record on housing policy is a
disgrace. Reports say
we face a ‘housing time bomb’. There
are 1.6 million on council house waiting lists. Their numbers are
growing by 7.6% a year. Repossessions were up by 65% last year to
17,000 losing their homes, and official homelessness went up by 14.4%
between 2000 and 2005. Last year we built less houses than any year since the
1920s. And because so few new homes are being built, prices go up so as
to be completely unaffordable for the poorer in our society.
Ten years ago in Britain, at the time of the sudden death of
Diana, we witnessed an outburst of popular feeling without precedent in recent
British history. It was an entirely new phenomenon, reflecting an entirely new
situation in Britain. Here we republish Alan Woods’ article written in 1997 which
looked at the serious crisis the monarchy and the British establishment were
facing at the time.
Everyday our television screens are filled with
images of horrific bloodshed and carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds die,
men, women and children, in a single day. Some estimate that one million people
have perished since the invasion of 2003. This is the reality after more than
four years of foreign occupation.
In May 2004, we reported Scotland’s worst ever industrial disaster when the
Stockline plastics factory in Glasgow exploded leaving 9 dead and 40 injured.
It was another searing indictment of breaches in Health & Safety
legislation, now a matter of course in Britain. Ex-employees told journalists
they had been sacked after raising concerns about safety. The 2 companies jointly responsible, ICL Tech and
ICL Plastics, faced only charges relating to Health & Safety, for which they have now been
fined a measly £400,000.
Showing tonight on ITV1 is The War on Democracy , John Pilger’s documentary that analyses the relationship between Latin America and the US, focusing on Washington’s attitude to
countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger pays special attention to the developing situation in Venezuela, including an interview with President Hugo Chavez.
A recently published
book by Francis Beckett, The Great City Academy Fraud, is a clear exposé
of the City Academies programme of the New
Labour government. Launched by David Blunkett in March 2000, the Academies
programme is both an attack on state education and, in educational terms, a
disaster. The programme is also an example of the spin and deceit methods that
are the hallmark of New Labour.
Brown has replaced Blair as leader of the Labour Party and Prime
Minister, but has anything fundamental changed? Absolutely not! And yet behind
this seemingly uneventful change lies the manoeuvre to stop John McDonnell to
stand for the leadership. All the indications were that John would have made a
good showing. Something is stirring in the British labour movement.
The first showing of the new film No Volveran attracted a large number
of people. Read the report on the Hands Off Venezuela website .
The collapse of Metronet , the consortium
entrusted with upgrading the tube, spells the collapse of the whole notion of
‘Public Private Partnership’, otherwise known as the Private Finance
Initiative.