Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
SUPPORTERS of the free schools and academy programmes pretend this handover of Department for Education cash and resources to a bunch of businessmen, conservative and religious ideologues is some kind of grassroots social movement driven by “charitable” impulses.
But look at the accounts one of the key “charities” involved, the New Schools Network, and it is obviously all a government-funded front pretending to be from the “grassroots.”
The New Schools Network was founded in 2009 by Tory activists to promote Conservative education policy. From 2011 on it started getting government grants from the Department for Education. The New Schools Network was paid to promote academies and free schools.
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
Cuts are sweeping campuses as cash-strapped universities slash staff and politicians fail to act on a growing funding emergency. VINCE MILLS reports
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES


