“When you read that the masters and mistresses of the Universe are being expelled from their glass palaces, ferrying their possessions in cardboard boxes, you can't quite find it in you, somehow, to mourn…”

AROUND 2,500 Tube infrastructure workers at Metronet are to be balloted for industrial action over breakdowns in industrial relations following the victimisation of an RMT safety rep, dangerous plans to reduce signals maintenance and attempts to impose rosters.

The safety rep is Andy Littlechild. “Andy Littlechild has been fitted up on a bogus charge that would embarrass the Spanish Inquisition, and to add insult to injury he was thrown out of his depot at 3am with no means of getting home,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow commented.

Our lives, those of our children, our health and living are subjected to the whims of the gambling table, otherwise known as the ‘world financial system’. In what way can betting on the prices of stock and shares benefit humankind? Rather, it inevitably leads, at some stage, to crisis, as the blind bets get called in.

Now, with the crisis of the capitalist system unfolding, the poverty, hunger and homelessness experienced by some sections of working class people is spreading to wider and wider layers. This is initially being expressed in foreclosures on home loans and an increase in homelessness.