Comment

INTERNATIONAL financial and trading organisations would have us believe that deregulation and marketisation underpin today's global norms.

CROSSRAIL may be 20 years late, but it will be welcome nevertheless as part of the project of encouraging people in the Greater London region to use public transport rather than private cars.

THE huge and increasing disparity between salaries paid to council executives and to local authority staff exemplifies the values espoused by new Labour.

THERE is something farcical about the prime minister of a nuclear-armed state addressing the parliament of another nuclear-armed state - although not officially admitted - telling a third state that it will be prevented at all costs from producing nuclear weapons.

THE weekend festival at Tolpuddle not only commemorates an injustice done to six agricultural workers 174 years ago but serves as a reminder that working people are still denied basic rights today.

THE small but immensely profitable oligopoly that runs our gas and electricity industries pleads market forces as the reason for swingeing rises imposed on consumers.

IN an exercise which reeks of either futility or corruption, Europe Minister Jim Murphy announced on Thursday that Britain has officially ratified the European Union's Lisbon Treaty.

ALL trade unionists should be supportive of the unified strike action called for on Wednesday and Thursday by mainly low-paid local government workers.

IT is rare for a Cabinet-level politician to write his or her own job description, but that seems to be exactly what Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is doing at the moment.

TRANSPORT Secretary Ruth Kelly opted for discretion last week in seeking to defer the howls of derision that will attend her announcement that the government is to press ahead with a third runway at Heathrow next year.