The Socialist 16 September 2020

Our lives and livelihoods at stake

Our lives and livelihoods at stake

Sketch: The rule of six - some guidance from your government

Johnson's brinkmanship over EU deal deepens capitalist splits

Blame politicians, not workers and young people

Capitalist profit and the race to develop a vaccine

'Covid marshalls' must be accountable to communities

Under the microscope

Angry health workers demand 15% now!

NHS workers: "We deserve a fair wage" - 15% now!

National Shop Stewards Network lobbying for a lead from the TUC

PCS members in DWP reject unsafe extension of hours

Ireland: Debenham's occupier speaks out

London bus drivers begin strike ballot over remote sign-on dispute

Tate workers on indefinite strike hold march and rally

Reinstate Tony Smith

Reinstate Richie Venton

Dispatches from the front: schools need Covid tests!

Covid and the third sector: for public planning, not charity stopgaps

Non-fiction: Left Out - the inside story of Labour under Corbyn

Egypt: Support for al-Sisi dwindles as his regime increases repression

Nigerian police repress peaceful anti-government protest

Two weeks to donate: we need your help

Coventry: scrap 'profit before people' hospital parking charges

Covid generation says 'fund our future'

Why I joined the Socialist Party: Tories and Blairites only care about corporate greed

Selling the Socialist

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Under the microscope

Covid-19, photo NIH/CC (Click to enlarge)

Bosses' pandemic profit bonanza

32 of the world's biggest corporations are in line to make an extra $109 billion profit under 2020's pandemic conditions, says Oxfam. The 'S&P 500' US stock market index hit an all-time high of 3,581 points on 2 September, while recession and unemployment punish millions of workers.

The 25 most profitable global firms could pay over $378 billion in dividends this year - equivalent to 124% of profits. Chemicals giant BASF took £1 billion in emergency loans from the British government - and plans to pay shareholders over €3 billion!

Meanwhile, Oxfam reports the pandemic fallout could push half a billion people into poverty. 400 million jobs have gone already, and the ILO reckons 430 million small enterprises are under threat. One 63-year-old manager made redundant by his restaurant even resorted to handing out CVs at Leeds railway station.

Privatised testing and treatment fiasco

The government is looking to hand £10 billion to private hospitals to fill in for overwhelmed NHS services over the next four years. Why not cut out the middleman and just fund the NHS? And how will Tory plans to axe Public Health England help the problem?

Aside from the wasteful drain of profit extraction, how can we even trust the private sector? Healthcare regulators in England and Scotland declined to publish care home death tolls because this would "likely prejudice the commercial interests of care providers"!

Johnson's welcome (but belated and secret) mass testing proposal, 'Operation Moonshot', would cost £100 billion. No doubt the Tories will try to hand this to private bosses too.

Meanwhile, swab tests can miss 30 to 50% of infections, finds Cambridge University. And even the paltry number of tests administered so far was subject to "an adjustment" last month - the government had overstated the figures by, oh, 1,308,071.

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Our lives and livelihoods at stake