General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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A zombie budget from a dead-beat government
ROBERT GRIFFITHS reviews last Wednesday's Budget, outlining the obvious alternatives — that are not even radical let alone socialist — the government could have adopted to fix the sinking ship that is our economy
Whittington Estate
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
CHANCELLOR Jeremy Hunt has scattered some scraps before the electorate in the hope of saving Tory skins at the forthcoming general election. All the signs are that it’s not working.
Nor does this zombie budget deserve to work.
The headline-grabbing bribes are worth more to the rich than to the poor. Yet even the Chancellor’s remaining friends in the City are unimpressed, if not downright sceptical. And with good reason, as Wednesday’s economic and fiscal outlook suggests.
In an unusually blunt summary near the beginning of its report, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) highlights the serious risks that could derail almost all present-day assumptions, estimates and forecasts, including those of the Chancellor and of the OBR itself.
As the report admits: “Historically large changes in energy prices, interest rates, wage growth and population growth have driven significant revisions to our recent economic and fiscal forecasts.”
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