The Socialist 4 February 2009

Workers show their strength

Lindsey refinery: workers show their strength

Firm strike leadership gains results

Organising real trade unionism

Response from Italy

Staythorpe power station: "It's all about money"

The diary of a striker

Striking at Fiddlers Ferry

United action needed to save education

Youth Fight for Jobs campaign

Gaza protests: Police attacks show stewarding vital

May Day: Lords judgement backs police

Corus steal jobs: Workers must fight back

Weather chaos exposes cutbacks

Car industry bailout plan

Wirral: Stop the cuts and closures

Fast news

Liverpool: Far right BNP exposed

Sri Lanka: Stop the slaughter!

Sri Lanka: Thousands trapped in war zone

France: millions strike against Sarkozy's policies

Economic crisis - cracks appear in the bosses' EU

Iceland: Devastated by global crisis

Lessons of the Jarrow Crusade: no return to the 1930s!

Previous issues, etc

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Weather chaos exposes cutbacks

WHEN HEAVY snow showers saw rail, road and air transport grind to a halt in much of Britain last week, millions of workers were unable to travel. For the first time in living memory London's buses were taken off the roads. Even The Socialist had to delay production for a day. The cost to the economy is estimated at more than one billion pounds.

Having been given days' notice by meteorologists, why did several centimetres of snow have such a devastating effect?

Significant factors were: decades of lack of investment in contingency planning and infrastructure, combined with years of local authority cutbacks and privatisation of services. Many councils used up their stocks of salt within 24 hours.

The axing of directly employed council staff and the privatisation of road services by councils to cut costs has led to many roads and pavements not being gritted.

Private rail companies are not prepared to invest in snow ploughs and heated points for what they consider to be unusual occurrences.

So when headline writers talk of 'snow chaos' they should refer to 'cuts chaos'.

In this issue

Lindsey refinery

Lindsey refinery: workers show their strength