National Union of Journalists general secretary Michelle Stanistreet has drawn a direct link between compulsory redundancies at the BBC and the malign influence of Rupert Murdoch on the government.
She told pickets in London on July 15: "These cuts and job losses have been brought about directly by a decision to freeze the licence fee for the next six years.
"This was a shabby deal done by BBC management and the government behind closed doors last autumn, with no democratic scrutiny or transparent discussion.
Britain
In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh鈥檚 brilliant satire on the press, there is the moment when Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast, meets his new special war correspondent, William Boot, in truth an authority on wild flowers and birdsong.
A confused Boot is brought to his lordship鈥檚 presence by Mr Salter, The Beast鈥檚 foreign editor.
鈥淚s Mr. Boot all set for his trip?鈥
鈥淯p to a point, Lord Copper.鈥
Copper briefed Boot as follows: 鈥淎 few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the Patriot side and a colourful entry into the capital.
With no less than 10 inquiries occurring simultaneously, a few things have become clear about the criminal behaviour of Rupert Murdoch鈥檚 media empire.
Oh this is such fun. And every few hours it gets better, but always with an announcement there鈥檚 鈥渟till worse to come鈥, leaving us struggling to imagine what they might have done that鈥檚 worse.
Presumably by tomorrow it will turn out they planted a bug in Heather Mills鈥檚 false leg and hacked into Stephen Hawking鈥檚 voicebox.
The only thing that tarnishes it slightly is now everyone hates Murdoch. It鈥檚 like when you follow an obscure band and they become famous.
How is the government getting away with this idea that a public-sector pension is a 鈥渓uxury鈥?
Is it something that suave bachelors show off, saying: 鈥淥nce I鈥檝e taken you for a spin in my Aston Martin, how about I show you the mid-range forecast for my teacher鈥檚 pension over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot.鈥
A pension is a necessity, so you might as well say we simply can鈥檛 go on enjoying the luxury of a sewerage system, given that the amount of waste we鈥檙e flushing is 35% higher than in 1996, so from 2015 we鈥檝e got to throw it out the window otherwise we鈥檒l end up like Greece.
Britain鈥檚 public sector unions are set to unleash a wave of strikes starting on June 30 in response to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government鈥檚 attack on workers鈥 pensions.
Unions have called a national day of action for June 30. Nearly 1 million public sector workers will strike for 24 hours.
With Italy being the latest European country to reject nuclear power in a June 12-13 referendum, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups in Britain has announced plans to hold a mass non-violent blockade of Hinkley Point nuclear power station on October 3.
The plant, near Bridgwater in Somerset, is expected to be the site of the first new nuclear power station.
Hundreds of campaigners are expected to take part in Gandhi-style civil disobedience, risking arrest by blockading the access road to the site in protest over the threat posed by nuclear power.
The British government continues to license millions of pounds in arms to the Sri Lankan regime despite suggestions that they may have been used in war crimes, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said on June 15.
New evidence of alleged atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan state in 2009 in its purge of a stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 emerged this week in a Channel 4 documentary screened in Britain
on June 14.
For more than two decades, until its defeat in 2009, the LTTE fought for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka's north-east.
Isn't this excellent news? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) say the British government's strategy for sorting us out is going to work.
Every time they've been asked to comment on a country's economy they've insisted it must cut wages, restrict the unions and privatise everything. So the government must have been really nervous as to whether they'd approve of the strategy of cutting wages, restricting unions and privatising everything.
It must have felt like waiting for your A-level results.
Delegates from Community, a trade union representing workers in iron and steel, clothing, textiles, footwear and betting industries, delivered a crushing blow on June 7. They opposed the union executive's attempt to force through a resolution aimed at undermining the Trade Union Congress's policy of boycotting Israeli goods produced in illegal settlements.
At the union's biennial conference in Southport, members accused the leaders of seeking a 鈥渞etrospective mandate鈥 to support Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (Tulip), which they labelled 鈥渁n apologist鈥 for Israeli war crimes.
The response of the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to the economic crisis, which has been to implement billions of pounds worth of public spending cuts, is intensifying the effects of the crisis on the British people.
Austerity measures are worsening mass unemployment. Chief British and European economist at forecasting company IHS Global Insight Howard Archer has predicted unemployment will reach 2.67 million people by the end of 2011.
Springtime: The New Student Rebellions
Edited by Claire Solomon and Tania Palmieri
Verso 2011 283 pages,
paperback, 锟9.99
In years to come, when people look back at 2010-11 and try to identify the moment the fightback against the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition really got under way, many will select the huge March 26 TUC-sponsored demonstration in London.
Magnificent and inspiring as March 26 was, however, November 10, 2010 has perhaps a greater claim to be recorded as the moment the fightback began in earnest.
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