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
Remembering Dave Wetzel (1942-2024)
A champion of public transport and land value taxation, whose legacy lives on
MUSICAL PROTEST: A £50m cheque on the side of a bus is delivered by the Greater London Council to the Department of Transport HQ, as part of a protest at a disputed payment for the running of London’s buses and Tube trains. Dave Wetzel (front) was helped with the delivery by Terry Lightfoot (centre) and his band, 1985
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
DAVE WETZEL had a profound impact on my school life, he got me and many other schoolkids on the Tube during Ken Livingstone’s Labour administration under the Greater London Council’s Fares Fair Initiative. And he later persuaded me of the advantages of land value taxation when l was serving at the London Assembly.
Dave Wetzel was born in 1942 and educated at Southall Technical College, Ealing College and the Henry George School of Social Sciences. After working as bus conductor and official in the 1960s, Wetzel became political organiser of the London Co-operative Society between 1974 and 1981.
He was the Labour Party councillor for Hammersmith North (1981-86) at the Greater London Authority and chair of the transport committee between 1981-86, and was transport chief under Livingstone involved in the Fares Fair initiative.
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