Britain
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By Joe Boustead
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Tuesday, 17 February 2009 |
Coupled to the Bologna Process, though not explicitly included in
it, has been the privatisation of education and all that this entails. So now
not only are students faced with the fact that they will have to work harder
and longer hours for a shorter period of time, that the costs of their
education will also increase (so working on top of the hours required for
studying becomes more of a strain) but also that their courses may end up being
influenced by some company who’s only real interest in to create profit out of
the process…
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By Eric Hollies
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Friday, 13 February 2009 |
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The Private
Finance Initiative was always bonkers. The idea was that, instead of the
government borrowing to build infrastructural projects, they would hand the job
over to a private consortium to raise the money.This was
always daft. The government was always the safest borrower in town. When did
you last hear of a government going bust? Because its loans are completely
safe, the government can borrow at a cheaper rate than anyone else.
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By Steve Jones
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Thursday, 12 February 2009 |
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Yesterday it was David Blunkett and his
privately funded trip to South Africa, which he forgot to own up to. Today it
is Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and her £116,000 expenses claim. According to
the BBC: ‘Ms Smith reportedly claimed £116,000 in expenses for her home in
Redditch, Worcestershire, after telling the Commons that her sister's home -
where she stays while in London - was her main residence.’ The tax-free
Additional Cost Allowance is worth up to £24,006 a year at present.
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By Socialist Appeal
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Tuesday, 10 February 2009 |
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Boris Johnson,
Mayor of London, was the man who didn’t let the buses go out during the snow in
London on Monday 2nd February because he thought it was dangerous.
So how did he
expect people to get in to work? Now he’s docking transport staff a day’s pay for
not making it in. The managers who are making the threat are claiming that they
were ‘working from home.’ So they get their money.
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By Socialist Appeal
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Tuesday, 10 February 2009 |
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David
Blunkett has been rapped over the knuckles by the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards. Apparently the former Minister ‘forgot’ to register a trip to
South Africa paid for by a private training company.
Blunkett,
as a former Minister in charge of the Department for Work and pensions, was a
big fan of opening up the administration of the welfare service to the private
sector. No wonder. Sheffield-based firm A4e is bidding for a whole raft of
multi-million pound contracts under New Labour’s misnamed welfare reform
programme. And they find Blunkett’s services well worth purchasing.
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By A victim of capitalist extortion
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Monday, 09 February 2009 |
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In these recessionary times the fear of a
future with no income amongst redundant workers is persuading some to part with
all their cash in return for future wealth and riches - only to find themselves
bankrupt and maybe homeless. This is a legal form of
ripping you off, with the rise of the some of the worst kind of leeches to prey
on the real victims of the economic downturn. This cost me and by wife £50,000, and hundreds
of other hard working people have lost tens of thousands of pounds to this form
of legalised extortion.
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By Socialist Appeal Industrial Reporters
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Friday, 06 February 2009 |
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Campaigners to keep Tyne and Wear
Metro, Britain’s best-performing railway, in the public sector, have condemned
the publication of a list of ‘approved bidders’ that brings the network’s
operations a step closer to privatisation. Around 250 RMT members employed by the
Tyne and Wear passenger transport executive Nexus are to be balloted for strike action over the threat
to jobs and conditions posed by moves to privatise the network’s operations.
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By Rick Grogan (RMT)
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Tuesday, 03 February 2009 |
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Public transport in London, that kept going throughout the blitz, pathetically
came to a halt on Monday February 2nd because of a few inches of
snow – or rather because of cost-cutting by private firms keener to make a fast
buck than to provide a decent service to Londoners. The whole public transport
system, rail and buses alike, is privately owned and run for profit. Staff did
their best to keep the service going, but they weren’t helped by management
cheese-paring. As far as they are concerned, workers are just a cost that needs
cutting back.
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By Rachel Gibbs
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Wednesday, 21 January 2009 |
n light of the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza,
people in Britain and around the world have come out to demonstrate and show
their disgust at the imperialist attacks of the Israeli state and its funding
and support from both the UK and the USA. On the 10th of January supporters
of Socialist Appeal attended the Palestinian Solidarity demonstration in
Edinburgh.
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By Matt Wells
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Tuesday, 20 January 2009 |
Around 300
people gathered in the centre of Cambridge last
Saturday in the biggest demonstration yet since Israel
began its assault on Gaza
a few weeks ago. A noisy rally was held in front of the Guildhall before a short
march through the town centre as shoppers were treated to the loud rallying cry,
‘Free, free Palestine, occupation is a crime!’
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By Socialist Appeal
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
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Whose fault is it that nearly 30,000 workers have lost their jobs
with the closure of all the Woolworths stores? Not the workers, that's for
sure. We are due to see an avalanche of job losses after Christmas. Unemployment
is nearly 2 million already, and due to hit 3 million in 12 months' time. None
of these workers deserve to lose their jobs. They are the victims of a
capitalist system that is just not working. How can we make things better? If
we fight for work or full pay, the bosses would soon find them something to do.
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By Socialist Appeal
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Wednesday, 14 January 2009 |
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In 1848 The Communist Manifesto opened with the line, "A spectre is
haunting Europe - the spectre of communism. " The spectre of Marx haunts
world capitalism still.The years of steadily rising living standards, of relatively full employment
have gone, never to return. This year, and for years to come, workers look with
trepidation at their future. Will they have a job? Will they still have a roof
over their heads?
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By Andy Blake, CWU
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Tuesday, 13 January 2009 |
The government has thrown its weight behind the
Hooper Report and decided to sell 30% of its stake in Royal Mail.
The background to all this is that Royal
Mail has been making shed loads of profit for us as a publicly owned company
for years. The trouble was that the Treasury has been using the Post office as
a milch cow all that time, siphoning off all the money. Then the government
complains that the firm hasn’t invested. No wonder!
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By Hamish McLaren
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Friday, 09 January 2009 |
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2008 makes for a sad story, and in 2009, the working class will
begin really paying for it. Some of the worst to be affected will be young
unskilled workers; cleaners, shop-workers and caterers, like myself. Minimum
wage workers at the best of times, we have, during the period of boom (which
apparently was the last 10 years, although no one told us) eked out an
existence, hovering from one place to the next for as long as moral holds out.
Most I have worked with were young, often migrants, demoralised but unorganised
and so usually without contracts of employment and subject to very poor working
conditions.
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By Dan Morley
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Monday, 05 January 2009 |
Buried on page 11 of the Guardian on 1st
November is an article, extremely enlightening in its simplicity, reporting the
‘news’ that during office Blair was only too happy to do Rupert Murdoch’s bidding.
According to Lance Price, former Downing Street
spin doctor, Murdoch was ‘one of the four most influential people in the
administration’. Never mind that he was totally unelected, not actually a part
of any ‘administration’, or that he is a US citizen whose company (News Corp.)
pays no net tax.
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