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
Why ScotRail stops short of public ownership
VINCE MILLS exposes the SNP’s agenda of keeping the train service in private hands to comply with EU directives
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
WHO could blame RMT’s general secretary Mick Cash when he said: “We have long campaigned for the Scottish government to utilise its existing powers and take Scotland’s rail passenger services into public ownership and today’s announcement represents a clear victory for this campaign.”
Except that the Scottish government has not taken ScotRail into public ownership. Instead, a publicly owned “operator of last resort” (OLR) will take over the ScotRail franchise in 12 months’ time when the Abellio franchise ends in March next year.
What’s the difference? The difference is that although the SNP is complaining about the current franchising model, it is committed to competition in rail services because it wants an independent Scotland to join the EU, and in the EU it is obligatory for member countries to allow competition for rail services.
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VINCE MILLS cautions over the perils and pitfalls of ‘a new left party’
VINCE MILLS says politicians of various parties are interpreting the result in self-serving ways, but it contains little comfort for the left
VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative
That Scotland was an active participant and beneficiary of colonialism and slavery is not a question of blame games and guilt peddling, but a crucial fact assessing the class nature of the questions of devolution and independence, writes VINCE MILLS
