Balfour Beatty accused of major tube safety breach
A truly frightening press release from transport union RMT: ‘Metronet Consortium member Balfour Beatty took a “massive and unacceptable gamble with people’s lives” by taking two 54-kilo containers of highly flammable and unstable acetylene gas into the Victoria Line, London Underground’s biggest union reveals today. ‘An LUL [London Underground Limited] investigation is under way into [...]
George Galloway: gaff up for grabs
Assuming you could possibly hack living in Streatham – apologies to anyone that has to – then George Galloway’s five-bedroom South London Victorian abode is on the market, pictured left. It’s a real snip at just £825,000. Full details and internal pix can be seen on the Foxtons website: ‘A magnificent five bedroomed family house [...]
The strange death of grassroots activism
Continuing on the theme of the withering of local democracy, it’s worth adding that one factor in all of this is a sharp fall in participation in local political organisations. I can say from personal experience that there were plenty of young people active in the Constituency Labour Parties I was a member of in [...]
More on safety at BP
Radio Four’s long-running documentary strand File on Four this week looks at safety standards at UK oil major BP, a subject this blog has previously covered. And – if the taster on the BBC’s website is anything to go by, the programme will not much to the liking of £15,000-a-day Lord Browne of Madingly or [...]
Amicus and T&G: you read it here first
Today’s Guardian carries a report on the battle to divvy up the top jobs when Amicus and the TGWU merge at the start of next year. It’s a story you could have read on this website more than one month ago. In much greater detail, too. Thanks to the informant on that one. More of [...]
The decline of local democracy
Local democracy has been under attack from successive governments – both Conservative and Labour – for more than two decades now. It’s reached the point now where the chief function of many councils is to vote on which private company gets the contract to empty the bins. And with no disrespect to friends of mine [...]
Saturday Night Music Club:where are they now?
Coulda had class. Coulda been a contender. Well, maybe not. As a teenager, I was never a particularly good guitarist, to be honest. Indeed, I failed auditions for Adam and the Ants and Generation X. True. Of course, mostof the stars of that era have moved on to other things. Take former Clash drummer Terry [...]
Press freedom in Somalia
Sections of the left were clearly delighted when the Union of Islamic Courts seized control of Mogadishu last July. ‘For the first time for many years there is a sense of relief and hope among many people in Somalia,‘ Socialist Worker told its readership, in a wholly positive article in which our ‘revolutionary socialists’ found [...]
No Respect for its own membership
Whoever it is exactly that Respect purports to respect, it’s certainly not its own supporters. The group’s own internal figures – as recently reported on this blog – show that paid-up membership has fallen from 3,040 a year ago to 2,160 today. But instead of facing reality squarely, the George Galloway/SWP bloc’s leadership has decided [...]
Journalists in ‘principled stand’ shocker
As a journo by trade, I am well aware that my chosen profession is not universally popular in the labour movement. My job takes me to trade union conferences with reasonable regularity, so I know that sometimes the mere sight of a press pass can make delegates unnecessarily edgy, and at times even downright shirty. [...]
