The Libyan war goes on and on.........

Well, here we are on the last day of May and the ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Libya is still ongoing.


When it started, it was supposed to be about protecting civilians in Benghazi- now it’s quite clearly about regime change- which is illegal under international law.

And in the words of The Guardian's Jonathan Steele:

Beware ministers' claims that a military campaign is making slow but steady progress. It nearly always means the opposite. If "progress" was really being made in Libya, why would it be necessary for Britain and France to send attack helicopters?


As to how much this latest military adventure is costing us- take a look at this .
 
Remember the article the next time you hear a coalition politician trot out the line ‘we’ve got no money left because Gordon Brown spent it all’.

Spanish Lessons: What UK's young jobless can learn from Barcelona

This article of mine appears in today's First Post.

Neil Clark: Spain’s street protests will be pertinent here as unemployed under-25s approach 1m


Judging from Saturday's hopelessly one-sided Champions League final, in which Manchester United were, in Sir Alex Ferguson's own words, "given a hiding" by Barcelona, it's likely to be a few years at least before English football catches up with the super-skilled Catalonian version.



But the Spanish tactics for streets protests – against joblessness among the young and against the power of the banks – is another matter.

You can read the whole article here.

A Tangled Web

This article of mine appears in the Sunday Express.

PROFESSOR Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist from south London who invented the World Wide Web is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, a modest man with very little to be modest about. His invention has, after all, radically changed the way we live and do business.



I was lucky enough to interview this truly Great Briton and what struck me was the passion he had for keeping the internet free from government censorship and other forms of outside control.


I think it’s time we all paid close heed to Berners-Lee’s wise words.


Calls for greater regulation of the net are growing increasingly louder and debate has raged over the rights and wrongs of 75,000 users of Twitter leaking the news of footballer Ryan Giggs’s injunction, which was intended to prevent press coverage of his extramarital affair. “The web should be like paper,” Berners-Lee told me.


“A form of paper which doesn’t allow you to write sentences which are malformed, or not in English, or of right-wing or left-wing bias, would be a very poor form of paper on which to base civilisation.


The beauty about the web, according to Berners-Lee, is that anyone, rich or poor, of whatever ethnic origin, can set up a site or blog and express their opinions, giving people a voice who previously never had one.



The fact that millions have been empowered in such a way obviously scares the powers-that-be. In some parts of the world, political censorship of the web is a reality.

Save the NHS protests held across Britain

The Daily Mail reports:

Protesters are lining up outside banks up and down the country in opposition to proposed changes to the NHS. 

'The NHS did not cause the financial crisis – the banks did and are continuing to make billions in profits. And yet it is the NHS which is being cut,' said Candy Udwin of the Camden Keep Our NHS Public campaign, which took part.


'Here in Camden there are hundreds of jobs under threat and that is why protests like this are being strongly supported.'


Health worker and UK Uncut supporter Rosie Beech, 29, said: 'David Cameron said he wasn't going to cut the NHS. He lied. '50,000 NHS staff will lose their jobs, whilst the taxpayer continues to subsidise the banks.'

Also, in the Guardian:

Protesters have been holding demonstrations outside high street banks around the UK and have succeeded in occupying a number of branches in the biggest direct action to date against proposed changes to the NHS.



The national protest, designed to draw attention to the banks' role in creating the deficit, is being spearheaded by the anti-austerity campaigning group UK Uncut, which has been were joined by trade unionists and others.

The British people will never allow the NHS to be destroyed. It's time Andrew Lansley and the other neoliberal 'reformers' in the current government realised that.

Selling off the Tote marks a race to the bottom for the sake of ideology

This piece of mine appears in today's Guardian.

Neil Clark: Britain's publicly-owned bookmaker keeps horseracing diverse. Without it, smaller courses would struggle to survive.



Sir Winston Churchill will be turning in his grave. For 83 years, the Tote, Britain's publicly-owned bookmaker, set up by Churchill when he was chancellor of the exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government in 1928, has been an integral part of the British horseracing scene. Now, however, the institution endearingly known as "the Nanny Goat" is to go the way of our railways, our buses and our utilities and be transferred to the private sector.



While free-market enthusiasts will no doubt be pleased to see a further shrinking of the state, the sale is likely to prove disastrous for a sport which employs more than 100,000 directly and indirectly, and which brings joy to millions of people's lives.

You can read the whole of the article here.

Put Britain's trains on the right track

This piece of mine appears in the Sunday Express.

IMAGINE a detective arriving at the scene of a murder and failing to question the person caught holding a blood-stained dagger over the body. Imagine, too, that the detective then makes no mention of said person in his report.



Far-fetched? Well, overlooking the obvious is exactly what happened last week in relation to an inquiry into Britain’s railways.


Sir Roy McNulty, former chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, was appointed to investigate why our railways are the most expensive in Europe.


His report found 10 main barriers to efficiency and made a series of recommendations, including cutting staff at stations and allowing some train operators to assume responsibility for maintenance.


The most noteworthy thing about Sir Roy’s report was what it did not recommend.


The reason why our fares are the highest in Europe is because, unlike other European countries, our railways are privatised.

UK’s huge wealth gap can and should be corrected.

This article of mine appears in today's First Post.

Neil Clark: Both the Tories and the Lib Dems need to rediscover their roots in equality politics

 
Keen on the Victorian Age? Well, we're heading back there, according to the new report of the High Pay Commission. The commission, which was set up last November to look in to the ever-rising gap between high and low pay in the UK, predicts that if current trends continue, then by the year 2030 Britain will be witnessing levels of inequality not seen since the beginning of the 20th century.
 
You can read the whole article here.