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Nominate Roger Bannister
Council workers need a fighting union
Roger Bannister is a member of the Unison union's national executive, and campaigning to stand for election as Unison general secretary. Roger says the union must fight the cuts in Birmingham, which are being repeated by councils, health authorities and the education sector nationwide:
"THE PROPOSED culling of jobs, conditions, pay and public services has begun. Dave Prentis, Unison's present general secretary, attacks the Tories who run Birmingham council but Labour councils will make similar cuts. Will he attack them? Why can't the Labour government bail out our public services as they did with the banks?
Bank bosses making the workers pay
The announcement of massive job cuts in the banking sector further underlines that the bank bailouts had nothing to do with defending the interest of working class people.
Lloyds TSB has planned to cut up to 5,000 jobs across the UK. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) plans to cut 3,700 jobs on top of the 16,000 jobs it has already axed. HSBC, who announced that its third quarter profits were "significantly ahead" of last year, will cut a further 1,700 jobs meaning 3,400 job lost since December. In Ireland, Ulster Bank which is owed by RBS had axed 1,000 jobs this year and now wants to cap pensionable salary, reduce pay and seriously undermine conditions of employment.
As inner cities erupt – A mass workers’ movement is needed to defeat the government
"The scenes of despair and explosions of anger like those of 1981 will be back on our streets.
Sammy Wilson bans climate change!!
IT DOES not come as much of a surprise to most people in Northern Ireland to hear that, yet again, the Assembly has managed to make a monumental mess of things. But the decision of Environment Minister Sammy Wilson to ban the broadcasting of a government TV ad encouraging people to switch off electrical appliances when not in use in order to save energy has left even the most hardened political cynics open-mouthed.
News stations around the world have broadcast the story in disbelief. Wilson’s reason for this unprecedented move was that the ad was just more “insidious New Labour propaganda” about the impact of climate change. Incredibly, Wilson has said that the world-wide “uninformed hysteria” surrounding the issue was “a con” which had been launched into without examining the “science and implications”. Yet he ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence linking human activity to global warming and virtually universal acceptance that emergency action is urgently required to prevent a major environmental crisis.