The surge of support for a one-off windfall tax on energy firms’ obscenely excessive profits may be on the point of becoming irresistible…

GORDON Brown suggests that about 1,000 British troops who are bogged down in Basra could return home by Christmas – but the Morning Star is not impressed.

The Morning Star looks at the hypocrisy of Gordon Brown’s recent refusal to attend the same meeting as Robert Mugabe. It suggests he take a look at the crimes of the UK itself and some of its staunch allies before mounting his moral high horse.

New Labour’s support for private enterprise combined with cutting back on the role of local authorities in providing social housing have been key factors in the Northern Rock crisis, argues the Morning Star.

A growing number of people in Britain are simply being priced out of the housing market, writes the Morning Star.

The British government’s reliance on control orders, writes the Morning Star, is effectively a means of criminalising suspects without resorting to the justice system.

The new EU constitutional treaty, far from being just an amending treaty, is a further pernicious assault on democracy and popular sovereignty, write the Morning Star.

Compare the billions of pounds of government-approved profits made by the privateers with the treatment of public-service workers – job cuts and below-inflation pay – and it’s no wonder that their unions are fed up and ready for industrial action, write the Morning Star.

Many trade unionists have deluded themselves that a revived real Labour, progressive Mr Brown will emerge in the wake of war criminal Tony Blair, write the Morning Star.

European Union decision to resume direct aid to the new Palestinian government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is presented as a humanitarian gesture, write the Morning Star – but it is a hard-headed political decision that is intended to convey EU determination to smash any opposition to Israel’s role as imperialism’s regional policeman.

If there was ever a service that should not need the advocacy of a trade union to defend it, writes the Morning Star it is the home care service provided to those whose only other alternative is residential or National Health Service care.

OVER recent years, it has been a pleasure to see the British Medical Association adopting and publicising some fairly progressive and radical policies.
It comes, therefore, as rather a disappointment to find it falling into all the old traps in its pronunciations on the rising cost of treatment in the NHS, the impossibility of funding them all and, thus, the necessity of “rationing.”

MAY Day greetings to all working people at home and abroad and especially to the 200,000-plus PCS members who are on strike in protest at their disgraceful treatment at the hands of what passes for a Labour government.

Health & Safety Executive boss Geoffrey Podger’s response to the Centre for Corporate Accountability report into workplace deaths smacks of complacency.

Energy regulator Ofgem isolated two energy supply companies – Scottish Power and EDF Energy – for criticism yesterday, saying that the companies’ prices were lagging behind rival operators.

The news that tax exile and wannabe City Academy sponsor Andrew Rosenfeld has withdrawn from his involvement in the attempt to set up a new academy in the London borough of Brent gives a boost to the campaigners who have fought so hard to defeat the Blairite privatisation swindle.

The Iraqi draft law, which is expected to be nodded through the Baghdad parliament this month, pays lip service to public ownership, but it covers up the real intent of handing over control and the bulk of Iraqi oil profits to the oil majors.

As economic illiteracy goes, it is difficult to surpass that spouted by Tory leader David Cameron with regard to council housing.

Someone should certainly be in the dock over the secretive use of Prestwick airport by Washington to transport lethal weapons to Israel for its onslaught against Lebanon.

How Margaret Hassan was sacrificed for the political ends of Bush and Blair.