There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Bogus self-employment epidemic collides with the coronavirus epidemic
MARK HARVEY of the Institute of Employment Rights argues that Britain has walked into a perfect storm due to employers forcing workers to register as self employed — with no responsibility toward them in times like the present crisis
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THE coronavirus infected self-employment chickens have come back to roost – in their millions.
In 1995, I wrote a pamphlet for the Institute of Employment Rights. It was called Towards the Insecurity Society. It showed how an epidemic of self-employment had exploded in the construction industry in the United Kingdom.
I argued that the growth of self-employed and insecure, casualised employment “promotes a pervading sense of insecurity. It also undermines the viability of the tax system on which the very existence of the welfare state is based.
It creates a vicious downward spiral, diminishing the revenues necessary for a welfare state whilst at the same time creating more people likely to be dependent on it: an insecurity society.”
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Mark Harvey pays tribute to a veteran of the days when the London building trade was a hotbed of working-class struggle, a legendary trade unionist, communist and poet
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