RAMZY BAROUD on how Israel’s narrative collides with military failure
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Subsidy bonanza: the great train robbery continues
‘Our’ train companies — mostly partly owned from abroad — are trousering millions of taxpayer cash, as usual, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
ROGER McKENZIE explains how Ibrahim Traore has sparked the flames of hope across Africa, while the Western powers seek to extinguish all attempts to build true sovereignty in the long-exploited continent
DANIEL GOVER considers the procedural complexities awaiting a Private Member’s Bill in its passage through Commons and Lords
JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles
Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
THE latest accounts from the three train firms running the South Western Trains, Avanti West Coast, Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express rail franchises show these companies paid their owners a combined £69.5 million of dividends in 2022-23, despite depending on hundreds of millions in government subsidy.
The subsidy that kept these firms going was both much bigger than their profits and their dividends, so really they paid out this money to their shareholders directly from government aid.
When Covid slashed passenger numbers in 2020, the government tore up all the existing rail contracts and moved to huge subsidies to keep rail moving: the rail companies kept their privately run, publicly granted transport monopolies, but the Department for Transport pumped in extra cash to keep the trains running.
More from this author
Labour’s pop-loving front bench have snaffled up even more music tickets worth thousands apiece, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
Despite Labour’s promises to bring things ‘in-house,’ the Justice Secretary has awarded notorious outsourcing outfit Mitie a £329 million contract to run a new prison — despite its track record of abuse and neglect in its migrant facilities, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
