Save our NHS rally: 7 March
6-7.30pm Wednesday 7 March
Central Hall, Westminster London
Britain
Hester’s bonus and Goodwin’s knighthood – hue and cry conceals the real scandal
By Jane West
While it is welcome that Stephen Hester, CEO of the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been forced to forego his grotesquely inflated bonus – and that his predecessor Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood – the truth is the whole furore has been used to divert attention from the most central issue and real scandal relating to the banks.
Economic stagnation underlines error of Labour policy retreat
By James Wilkins
The latest economic figures showing that the British economy shrank in the last quarter of 2011 underlines the damage that Tory economic policy is causing – both to growth and living standards. A clear alternative to its ‘austerity’ policies is needed, but the Labour front bench’s recent further capitulation to the Tory economic framework weakens both the struggle for such an alternative and its own electoral position.
Labour falls sharply in polls after accepting Tory austerity
By Stephen MacAvoy
On 13 January Ed Balls, previewing a speech to the Fabians, launched a new Labour policy – that Labour supported the Tory-led governments public sector pay freeze and it would start from a baseline of maintaining Tory cuts.
Uniting the 99 per cent
By Andrew Williams
The Occupy movement, which has spread from Wall Street across the developed world, with a dynamic presence in London, marks a new wave of radicalisation in response to the global financial crisis. Its combination of radical forms of protest and a hegemonic political approach – for the 99 per cent – is a positive contribution to the opposition to austerity.
Across North America and Europe, governments are carrying out policies that hit the living standards of the majority of people, in order to increase profits and bail out failing banks. This is meeting an inevitable rise in discontent, but also a political fight over how this disaffection is expressed.
Investment not cuts
By Stephen MacAvoy
Falling real wages, record youth unemployment and collapsing living standards are not by-products but the aim of Tory economic strategy.