Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/661/11344
From The Socialist newspaper, 9 March 2011
Fast news
Benefit attacks
Average families living in three-bedroom homes in the south east will lose £2,500 a year as a result of the government capping benefit payments to a maximum £500 a week, according to a report by the homeless charity Shelter.
This swingeing attack on claimants' incomes will affect 50,000 households, involving 180,000 children. Shelter's survey shows that 47 central and south east England local authorities will dock £50 a week from unemployed families with three children, and another 90 authorities will cut £20 a week as a result of the government's benefits cap.
New housing benefit claimants will also be affected by a cap which limits the maximum payment for a three-bedroom home to £340 a week.
As reported previously in the Socialist, the likely consequence of a benefits cap is the social cleansing of poorer people in high rent areas of cities.
Fire alarm
AssetCo, the company which maintains London's fire engines under a private finance contract, is struggling to avoid being wound up as a result of tax debts. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in a letter to government minister Bob Neill, said: "This means that every single fire engine and fire appliance London owns could be forfeited as a result of the debts of AssetCo ... At the least, this will mean there will be no one to maintain London's fire engines."
During the FBU's fight last year against the imposition of unacceptable shift patterns by management, AssetCo was given 27 fire appliances by the London Fire Authority as part of an organised scabbing operation.
On yer bike
Last year, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was derided for telling the unemployed to get on a bus to find work. Getting on a bus to go to work for 200 workers at a rail ticketing call centre in Tyneside will be impossible if their employer, East Coast, transfers their jobs to Mumbai in India.
Outrageously, East Coast has told its Tyneside call centre workers they could retain their jobs if they moved!
Gaddafi's friends
Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics (LSE), has resigned after the college's lucrative financial ties with the Libyan dictator colonel Gaddafi were exposed by the media.
The furore of Gaddafi's £300,000 donation to the LSE raises a number of questions. Firstly, why haven't the other LSE board members resigned or been sacked? And, why haven't other public figures - including Labour and Tory MPs - who also cosied up to Gaddafi and his murderous regime resigned?
Finally, why did the LSE seek to court Gaddafi for his money in the first place? The college needed the cash because universities today cannot survive without a 'business plan' due to the commercialisation of higher education under successive Tory and Labour governments.
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In The Socialist 9 March 2011:
Anti-cuts campaign
Labour councils should fight cuts, not implement them!
Demonstrations against council cuts
Socialist Party youth and students
For a fighting student leadership
Jarrow march for jobs: Why Hull is marching
International socialist news and analysis
Middle East uprisings: The unfinished revolutions
Socialist Party news and analysis
Lib Dems 'get a kicking' in Barnsley
Wales votes 'yes' but workers' party needed
Lewisham: Vote for a real fight against the cuts
Cardiff march and rally against cuts
Brighton: Labour and Green Party councillors fail to stop Tory budget
Tories allow growth of Murdoch media empire
TUC must address demo access issue
Socialist Party workplace news
BP Hull Saltend construction workers win victory through strike action
Fighting the anti-trade union laws
UCU members vote for action on pensions, jobs and pay
Socialist Party feature
Casualties of cuts - and a rotten system
Needed: a fair deal for carers!
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