Save the NHS from corporate profiteers!

You can sign the 38 Degrees petition to Save the NHS here. Already they’ve got over 240,000 signatures- help them pass the 300,000 mark! And once you've signed, ask a friend to sign too.

Japan strikes back- at the world’s richest horse race

This piece of mine appears in the First Post.

Neil Clark: Japanese one-two makes for an emotional Dubai World Cup – but no one should be surprised.

Even the most imaginative Hollywood scriptwriter would have struggled to come up with the story which unfolded at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai this weekend.

Just over two weeks on from the earthquake and tsunami which devastated Japan and have left around 20,000 people either dead or missing, two Japanese horses - with their jockeys wearing black armbands to honour the dead - finished first and second in the world's richest horse-race, the $10m Dubai World Cup.

You can read the whole of the article here.

Life in ConDem Britain: No money for public services, but money for war

The Mole reports:

The Daily Telegraph has calculated that patrolling the no-fly zone is costing Britain about £3.2 million a day, before a weapon is fired. At that rate, the no-fly zone has cost British taxpayers £17 million so far.

The opening of the assault with 112 Tomahawk missiles which thudded into targets at the weekend, each costing around £500,000, burned up another £56 million.

Did you see George Osborne interviewed on Breakfast tv this morning? On being asked why the government was cutting the winter fuel allowances for pensioners, he came out with the old neoliberal claptrap about there being no money left in the kitty and that tough decisions on spending had to be made.

A decent interviewer would surely have asked him ‘what about the money for bombing Libya, George?'

On the subject of Libya, great pieces today by the Guardian's Seumas Milne, on why there is nothing moral about NATO's intervention, and Sasha Cockburn, in the First Post.

Cockburn writes:
The war on Libya now being waged by the US, Britain and France must surely rank as one of the stupidest martial enterprises, smaller in scale to be sure, since Napoleon took it into his head to invade Russia in 1812.

What happens if police join the protestors?

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

Neil Clark: David Cameron is taking a huge gamble by alienating the police

Let's fast forward to October 2011. British troops are bogged down in Libya. Unemployment is edging towards three million. The price of petrol and basic foodstuffs continues to rise. Anger against the coalition's austerity measures is spilling over into widespread strikes and street demonstrations, of the sort we witnessed in Greece last year.

A huge crowd makes its way towards Downing Street. Only this time, the police, instead of barring the way of the protestors, join in with them.

You can read the whole of the article here.

Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya: Beware the lies of March

This piece of mine appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.

It's March, the sun is shining and spring is just around the corner. Oh, and Britain is bombing a foreign country again. If you've got a distinct feeling of deja vu about what's been going on this weekend, then it's hardly surprising.

In this very week in 1999 Britain took a leading role in the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

And on this very day in 2003, Britain took a leading role in the bombing – and invasion – of Iraq.

And now we're at it again in Libya.

You can read the whole article here.

UPDATE: In case you haven't read it yet, there's a great piece by Andrew Murray, of the Stop the War Coalition in today's Guardian.

Under Cameron the state is big enough for a war, but too small to keep our local libraries open......
The Economist last week ran editorials demanding the shrinking of the state across the world and urging military intervention in Libya. The calibration of a state big enough to impose its military will on the Middle East but too small to keep the local library open is a study in the contradictions of neoconservatism worth pondering as David Cameron brings the "big society" to Benghazi with a bang.

You can read the whole of the piece here.

Stop the War Statement on Libya intervention

A new war has been declared in the Middle East. With the bloody and failing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still in place, the USA, Britain and France are now committed to an escalating armed intervention in Libya.

The imposition of a “no-fly zone”, air attacks on Libyan defences and Gaddaffi’s troops, and naval bombardments will not bring peace to Libya nor a resolution to the conflict there.
They will, however, cost more civilian lives and they will set Britain and the world on an escalator of military intervention which risks ending up with an occupation of at least part of Libya. .....

While few people are admirers of the Gaadaffi regime, the experience of Iraq underlines the dangerous futility of trying to impose “regime change” from without......

Attacking Libya and sponsoring the Gulf oligarchies’ invasion of Bahrain to prop up the threatened monarchy there – under the noses of the US fifth fleet - are of a piece. They represent a concerted effort by the western powers to first control and then bring to a halt the Arab revolutions, leaving the essentials of imperial power in the Middle East in place.

You can read the whole of the Stop the War statement here.

UPDATE: Stop the War have called an Emergency 'Hands Off Libya' protest for this afternoon (Sunday) from 3-4pm outside Downing Street. If you live in London and are free this afternoon, do try and get along to lend your support. More details here.

Unemployment is Cameron's Big Test

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

Neil Clark: Will Dave prove to be the son of Thatcher or the heir to Macmillan? Jobless crisis is the test

Britain isn't working. New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the number of Britons out of work rose by 27,000 in the three months to the end of January to 2.53 million, the highest number of unemployed since 1994. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 rose by 0.8 per cent to a new record of 20.6 per cent.

Not that we should be so surprised at the figures: Conservative-led governments and high levels of unemployment tend to go hand in hand.

You can read the whole of the piece here.