Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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£276,000 a year for chairing ISS – the company that wouldn’t pay its NHS cleaners on time
SOLOMON HUGHES introduces a Miliband-era Labour lord who’s doing very well for himself out of NHS privatisation
Unelected members of the House of Lords listen to a speech by Britain's unelected head of state Elizabeth Windsor
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
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NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
ONE of the biggest privatisation firms with their hooks into the NHS is led by a Labour lord who was given a top party role by Ed Miliband in 2011, and then put into the Lords.
Charles Allen — or Lord Allen of Kensington, as he is known thanks to Miliband’s Labour putting him in the upper house in 2013 — is the chairman of cleaning and catering corporation ISS.
I personally welcome Miliband’s role in the shadow cabinet, because I think he is one of the more genuinely left members of the “soft left.”
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