Simon Whelan describes how the uninterrupted growth of wealth amongst the already super-rich is taking place amidst a period of extreme economic turbulence, during which the living standards of working people have fallen sharply.

Simon Whelan reports on a big push by the Brown government – aided by the Royal Family and the right wing press – to promote the British ‘values’ of patriotism and militarism.

Simon Whelan discusses the recent research conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which reveals rising levels of inequality and relative poverty and public antipathy to this state of affairs.

On September 14, 2003, Baha Musa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist and father of two, was detained along with several others in a raid by the Queens Lancashire Regiment in the Haitham Hotel in Basra. Over the course of the next 36 hours, Musa was humiliated, starved, robbed, forced to drink his own urine, choked and repeatedly pummeled by perhaps dozens of British soldiers. He died as a result of the sadistic abuse.
Last month, a six-month court martial ended with the acquittal of the soldiers charged in Musa’s death.

A recent written answer to a parliamentary question from the Liberal Democrats revealed that the British Army sent 15 soldiers under the age of 18 to fight in Iraq, contravening a United Nation’s protocol on children’s rights.

The burden of taxation has fallen heaviest on the working class and the poor under Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The publication of this year’s annual Sunday Times “Rich List” records the enormous enrichment of a tiny layer at the very apex of British society.

The government’s home-ownership proposals will make the housing crisis worse by transferring new homes to the private sector.