BRITAIN: Hypocrisy of anti-union brigade
Over March 22-24, British Airways cabin crew staged a three-day strike over the refusal of BA management to negotiate a reasonable long-term pay offer. A second round of strikes was scheduled to begin on March 27. British socialist and comedian Mark Steel responded to the media and government hysteria against the strike in a March 17 column posted at MarkSteelinfo.com .
Mark Steel
Politicians and newspapers love to revere a war hero from Afghanistan. It’s strange, then, that they haven’t got round to Lance-Corporal Joe Glenton, the British soldier who has been arrested for addressing an anti-war protest in October.
There’s something touchingly innocent about the argument that the far-right British National Party (BNP), which won two European parliament seats in June, should be allowed space in the mainstream media as this will “expose their ignorant ideas”.
Over the last few years it’s become one of our quaint English traditions that on any day following the announcement of immigration figures, certain newspapers display headlines such as “TEN MILLION OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT POLES TO SWARM INTO BRITAIN LIKE PLUMBING LOCUSTS!!! And they plan to BUGGER OUR KITTENS!!!”
Within minutes of the first reports, it was clear the world was going mad.
Within minutes of the first reports, it was clear the world was going mad.
One of the many upsetting aspects to being in your 40s is hearing people your own age grumbling about “young people” the way we were grumbled about ourselves.
The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists.
When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation in Gaza, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like “Visual-Carnage-Responsibility-Back-To-Front-Upside-Down-Massacre-Disorder”.
Theyre not happy, these bankers whove been forced to resign, are they?
The next move, presumably, will be to nationalise the country’s gambling debts.
Thirty years we’ve had, of unfathomably wealthy bankers and dealers being justified as part of the free market.
Theres no way of saying this without sounding a bit pretentious, but I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. And the most instructive person I met may have been a frail old Black woman in a newsagent, who picked up a newspaper with a photo of Barack Obama on it, and thrust it under my nose.
There is a trial currently taking place in Belfast that seems to explain plainly how nothing makes any sense.
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