In their election manifesto, the Conservatives said that by April 2016 they would cap charges on residential social care and limit the liability of any individual needing long-term care, along with a rise in the level of personal assets above which people would be ineligible for state help.
New restrictions on the right to strike, including a 50 per cent voting threshold for union ballot turnouts, plus in some “essential public services” 40 per cent of those entitled to vote must vote for industrial action.
The Trade Union Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech has resurrected every wish-list governments ever had of smashing the working class. It embodies every anti-worker measure they’ve previously tried to implement and every shred of vindictive class hatred they have had in their ranks reaching back to day one of modern capitalism.
The EU elite have now taken to styling Luxembourg City the “Capital of Europe”, building themselves a whole district to help them feel comfortable in their capital.
18 August, Waterloo Station: rail unions and the TUC’s Action for Rail Campaign demonstrated against the double attack of fare increases and staff cuts.
The Trades Union Congress has announced a national union mobilisation against the government’s Trade Union Bill – starting with a lobby of parliament on Monday 2 November.
If it came from local authority leaders or senior NHS managers, the proposal to spend between £5.7 and £7.1 billion restoring the Houses of Parliament over a 40-year period would lead for calls for them to be sectioned.
Britain’s death rates for January to July 2015 were 30,000 up on similar figures for 2014 – the highest for a decade.
The direct action reported in Workers in July by criminal lawyers (outside of all the anti-trade union legislation in Britain), which is intended to clog up the criminal legal system in Britain, has now been escalated.
The NHS is facing a legal challenge from private provider Care UK, after four GP-led clinical commissioning groups awarded an elective care contract instead to a local NHS Trust in East London.
The “Save our Bank” campaign – the cooperative and mutualists who have seen the demise of the Co-op Bank and control passing to private equity and hedge fund – is still trying to fight back against the new owners.
25 August 2015
This book by Christian Felber, an economist and university lecturer in Austria, outlines an “alternative” to the economic chaos and social suffering caused by financial capital. Some of his ideas are utopian; but there’s also stimulating thought about how to mitigate capitalism’s callousness.
