This just arrived in my inbox:

COUNCIL TAX BENEFIT CUTS = THE NEW POLL TAX
Worse than Thatcher! Oppose all benefit cuts and sanctions

Stop this Halloween Horror!

Vigil & protest: 12.30 – 1.30pm

Wednesday 31 OCTOBER
Opposite Parliament – Lords’ entrance

Old Palace Yard, Abingdon St SW1 – Westminster tube

All welcome

THINGS YOU CAN DO

Come and raise your concerns on the Vigil ♦ Bring your own placards with issues you are concerned about ♦ call radio shows and your local press about how you will be affected ♦ Lobby your MP – find your MP here ♦  Contact your local councillors and ask for a borough-wide public meeting to oppose welfare reforms

On Wednesday the House of Commons will debate the Local Government Finance Bill which proposes to cut 10% of the grant local…

This is a guest post by Agamemnon Otero, co-founder of Brixton Energy and Repowering South London.

Solving our energy problems calls for a rethink of our energy investment, generation and distribution systems. It asks us to look beyond blaming the big energy companies or individual consumer habits, to focus on creating an affordable system where all energy users are the key to the solution, as opposed to ‘the problem’.

Preserving the heritage of the once mighty metropolis of Manchester

June 7, 2012 

As its name suggests, like Rochester and Cirencester, Dorchester, Lancaster and Chester, the great city we know today as Manchester, capital of the north, was a Roman castra, or crossing place. It was established where a number of their major through-routes, to Hadrian’s Wall at Carlisle, to York, to the Dee estuary and to London, crossed.

Set the point of a pair of compasses at that crossing-place, marked by the 15th-century cathedral, and draw a circle five miles in radius, and you enclose a million people. Double that radius, and your circle encloses a population of 2,500,000, the largest concentration of human beings in one area…

10 days ago, I wrote about the letter that North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Trust had issued to all of its employees, threatening to sack and re-employ them if they refused to sign a variation to their Agenda for Change (AfC) contracts removing the right to unsocial hours enhancements to sick pay. As I wrote, while I appreciate – and staff mostly concur – that there is some abuse of sick leave by a small number of staff, this should be addressed via disciplinary measures on those staff and not by penalising the vast majority of hard-working staff who are likely to be absent because of stress, infections or injuries (back injuries, for example, are commonly incurred while lifting patients or trying to prevent falls) picked up in the course of their work.

If you want to see the letter in full and see the coercive tactics being employed by…

Russell Tribunal on Palestine | Oct 16, 2012

PDF version

1. The fourth session of the Russell Tribunal continued its historic function of articulating civic protest and carrying the weight of insufferable conditions at a moment when the world society is facing its most incredible challenges. It should be noted that the UN Charter was created to emphasize the rights of people and not states.

2. The final session of the Tribunal focused on the responsibility of the United States of America (US) and the United Nations (UN) regarding the Israeli breaches of international law towards Palestine. There is now a situation in which Israel has achieved a status of immunity and impunity by their complete disregard for the norms and standards of international law facilitated by the US.

After hearing various witnesses and experts, the Tribunal has reached the following conclusions (it should be noted that invitations…

The one-word secret of Hunt’s success:

NEPOTISM

His relationship to Virginia Bottomley…..his dealings with the British Council….his inheritance of the SW Surrey constituency….his father’s history in UK Health provision….the Health interests for whom Bottomley now works….his capture of the Health portfolio in the recent reshuffle.

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Throughout his career, Jeremy Hunt’s advancement somehow always seemed to involve his path crossing that of the former Virginia Bottomley, known since 2005 as Baroness Nettlestone. Now – with the help of some initial sleuthing by regular Slogger Jackie – I can offer readers a big clue: they are cousins. Laid out below (for anyone with any feeling for the importance of meritocracy) is how still, in 2012, career progress of the type admired by David Cameron – “the leg up” – is alive and well. One where the right tie, who you know, and above all a…