Water is a public good, not a commodity. Today there will be a hearing in the European Parliament on the European Citizens Initiative – Right to Water (watch it live online). Nearly two million people signed this initiative across Europe, asking the European Commission to propose legislation implementing the human right to water and sanitation as recognised by […]
Posts under ‘Public services’
Ed Miliband, the NHS and the lurch back towards Blairism
Feb 14th, 2014 by John Lister.Ed Miliband’s Hugo Young lecture this week represents a giant step back to Blairism, and an extended statement of Labour’s failure to get the message. Who is Ed Miliband talking to? Who does he want to impress? Delivering a 6,000 word Hugo Young lecture this week, Miliband calls for “a new culture in our public services”. But in […]
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Welfare for Gideon’s corporate chums, but forget about it if you’re poor
Feb 4th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Last year, the “big four” banks – HSBC, Barclays, RBS and Lloyds – enjoyed a ‘too big to fail’ taxpayer subsidy of no less than £38bn, the New Economics Foundation thinktank (NEF) have revealed. This is in an economy where the budget deficit is still £111bn, and where money is so tight that Osborne has […]
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Parliament tomorrow debates the impact of Tory welfare reforms on poverty
Jan 12th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Two events in this last week point up both the savagery and mindlessness of the Tories’ continuing and relentless assault on benefits. One was Osborne’s declaration that, after lopping off £25bn from the social security system in this parliament, he will make additional £25bn cuts in the next parliament half of which will be severed […]
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Further failure by Carillion
Dec 18th, 2013 by Andy Newman.The publication today of a damning report by the Care Quality Commissionn about cleaning standards at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital comes as no surprise. Cleaning is the responsibility of the rogue private services provider, Carillion. The cleaning staff are diligent and hard working, but Carillion have simply failed to meet their responsibilities. The CQC report […]
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Roll back the State? No – We must roll back Austerity
Nov 5th, 2013 by Katy Clark.The Chancellor of the Exchequer was recently heralding a 0.8 per cent increase in gross domestic product as a recovery. Growth of any amount should not be attacked in the context of the longest recession since the Victorian era. However growth of this level is pitiful, and no sign that the government’s policies are working or that […]
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Royal Mail: deliberately underpriced to give profiteers a maximum return
Oct 26th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The truth is now slowly emerging about the Osborne/Cable disastrously mishandled Royal Mail sale. No less a bank than JP Morgan, arguably (until its recent fall from grace) the world’s top investment banker, told ministers before the flotation that the company should be valued at £10bn, three times the price finally settled on by the […]
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How Labour could still save the Royal Mail from privatisation
Oct 2nd, 2013 by Conrad Landin.It was all quite a shock. On Friday, as the government announced that potential shareholders in the privatised Royal Mail were already lined up, campaigners were pre-occupied with the ballot for an anti-sell off postal workers strike. A strike that will now come after the post has been privatised, if the government has its way. […]
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The politics of Royal Mail privatisation
Sep 13th, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.It’s looking like they will really do it this time. Where the blessed Margaret feared to tread, and New Labour ignominiously failed, our merry coalition of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in the process of privatising Royal Mail. Wheeled out to defend a policy that is conspicuously unpopular, Michael Fallon says this is about liberating Royal Mail, of […]
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Strike ballot for Royal Mail workers
Sep 4th, 2013 by Newsdesk.The Communication Workers Union (CWU) representing postal workers, has announced it will ballot for a national postal strike this month, if current ongoing talks with Royal Mail do not bring agreement. CWU is planning for ballot papers to go out on 20 September to 125,000 Royal Mail workers in what would be the first national […]
