The disadvantage of being British
The vicious treatment of the Windrush Britons – who arrived from the Caribbean as children from 1948 to 1971 – contrasts starkly with the position of EU nationals under the Brexit transition agreement.
Workers May/June 2018
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Foreign firms line up to plunder rail network
As parts of the rail network fail and the government’s Whitehall farce leads to ever more absurdities, the campaign to bring railways back into public ownership is gathering momentum around Britain…
Outsourcing: the vultures feeding off billions
The tsunami of outsourcing over the past decade has led to a culture of rotten business practices. When the merry-go-round finally comes to an end, it’s the workers and the public who are left to pay the bill…
Hands off Syria
With an opinion poll indicating that only 22 per cent of people in Britain support military action against Syria, Theresa May ordered the RAF to launch strikes – pre-empting debate in parliament.
We can make food safer: the responsibility is ours
Food safety and animal welfare concern or even alarm many of us. But the public debate is misleading at times. The EU has no more interest in animals than it does in workers…
Skills and education for the future of Britain
One of the consequences of Brexit must be that employers will no longer be allowed to dodge their responsibility to invest in training…
Brightest and best?
A focus on importing skilled labour denies skill here – and damages foreign countries…
British trade unions: early origins
The British working class was the first proletariat in the world to emerge out of the land. It had to make a stand or go under…
Populism and reaction
Despite the supposed threat to democracy from populism, the anti-populist reaction is worse…
Year-long campaign for engineering
The government has declared 2018 to be the year of engineering, a year-long campaign to tackle the engineering skills gap and widen the pool of young people who join the profession.
Apprenticeships: Poor match
In an unusually blunt speech the head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, highlighted the key issues her inspectors had found in their pilot inspections of apprenticeship providers since the new apprenticeship levy scheme began.
Stop the EU war machine!
During the 2016 referendum those who warned that the EU was developing its own army were dismissed as fantasists. Instead, we were told the EU had kept the peace in Europe. The truth is totally different…
Small can be beautiful
Britain could take a world lead in a new nuclear technology, and boost its energy self-sufficiency too…
Apprenticeship levy – we need a better way
For too long companies in Britain had relied on being able to import ready-skilled workers. That creates low levels of skill (not to be confused with low levels of potential) said to cost the British economy £2 billion a year.
Truce in uni pensions fight
The long-running dispute over pensions conducted by members of the University and College Union (UCU) has been suspended after they voted by 64 per cent to 36 per cent to accept the employers’ latest proposals.
NHS staff consider pay offer
It’s bad enough that the NHS has been lagging behind inflation for seven years but take the rise in travel costs, accommodation and food into account and the gap between the pay “rise” and RPI becomes even starker.
Boats 'transition' protest
Fishermen brought about 200 fishing vessels to six ports around the coast on Sunday 8 April to stage mass demonstrations against the government’s “transition” arrangements allowing the EU to control British waters until 2020.
Debt at record high
Global debts have risen to a new record high of £167 trillion, a rise of £21 trillion compared with 2016, according to the Institute of International Finance.
Health - Avoidable deaths
Across Britain an average of 229 avoidable deaths was recorded for every 100,000 people between 2014 and 2016 – a total of around 138,000 people a year.