The London Fire Brigade have been trying to impose a change in the
current shift system on its fire-fighters. This has been in the
pipeline for some time and would benefit the LFB management to the
detriment of its workforce.
As winter creeps, in students and staff at Edinburgh schools and nurseries have learned
of the chilling news that their places of learning and work places may be under
threat once again. The Edinburgh Evening News reported on the thirtieth of
October that Edinburgh Council intended to reopen a consultation process that
would look into the future of schools. It also listed seventeen schools and
nurseries that it expected to be earmarked for the process.
Marxists have always maintained that
at some stage the intensity of the class struggle affects even the "armed
bodies of men" of the bourgeois state. Such an example was the police strike in
Britain at the end of the First World War. In the late summer of 1918 the sight
of 12,000 furious Metropolitan constables marching on Whitehall sparked panic
among ruling circles in Britain. Under the leadership of the National Union of
Police and Prison Officers, militantly class-conscious policemen conspired to
overturn their role as the subservient body of the State.
BBC staff are set to ballot for strike over plans to axe up to 2500
jobs. The mood is angry and a big ‘yes’ vote is likely among the 23,000
workers. The three unions involved are Bectu, Unite and the National
Union of Journalists.
In the Guardian on September 4th George Monbiot gave a classic
example of PFI madness. In Coventry officials wanted to refurbish its
two hospitals.This would have cost £30m. They didn’t have £30m, so they had to go for PFI.
After weeks of media speculation the Brown bounce election became the general
election that never happened. Marx explained that the state and politics are like a superstructure that sits on top of society and maintains the appearance of having a certain independence. But in the final analysis, politics, the state and even bouncing Prime Ministers are organically connected to the real world. The prospect of a general election was just too risky.
King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia is occupying the headlines of many newspapers with
his comments that Britain
failed to act on intelligence that could have prevented the 7/7 London bombings. Beyond
the response of the bourgeois media, what is the real relationship between the
West and Saudi Arabia?
The UK Social Atlas
states that British society is becoming more and more segregated into
classes, and British people are becoming more and more conscious of the
class society in which we live. The report ‘finds’ that Britain is
becoming increasingly segregated along the lines of class, education,
income, occupation, health status and family type.
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.