The TUC has launched the campaign – Playfair Qatar – to draw football fans into the protests against Qatar’s treatment of the workforce building the infrastructure for its 2022 World Cup. The campaign will complement other campaigns already running by bringing in new allies.
Fans – many of whom are also trade unionists – are as outraged as anyone that Qatar’s lax health and safety and repressive “kafala” laws are likely to lead to 4,000 deaths before the 2022 World Cup begins. Football fans are considered such an important constituency in the battle of the hosting of the World Cup that Qatar has paid a PR agency to set up a “grass roots” blog which also serves as a platform for character assassinations of anyone criticising the country. Continue reading
The story behind Southern Cross that is slowly being exposed gets worse by the hour. We now know from research by the GMB, which represents nearly 11,000 staff employed by Southern Cross, that up to half of the properties at the 753 care homes were acquired by a company called NHP, of which the ultimate parent company is Delta Commercial Property. This is a company owned by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and is registered in the Isle of Man. The financial returns for this company are consolidated within Libra No.2 Ltd, incorporated and registered in the Cayman Islands. Other corporate shareholders over the last decade have as their ultimate holding company RBS, Bank of New York, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Lloyds, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Royal Bank of Canada – a rollcall of many of the world’s biggest banks. 
The royal wedding is not a state occasion, or so it was claimed to justify the non-inclusion of