By Paul Stuart - 1 February 2012

The security operation will begin when the Olympic flame arrives in Lands End, Cornwall, and will finish after the closing ceremony of the Para-Olympic games, approximately three months later. For this period, up to 23,700 security guards (including 3,000 unpaid volunteers) will be provided by G4S [private security]. They will join 13,500 military personnel, a larger force than the 10,000 British soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, and almost 12,000 police, as many as were deployed in last August’s rioting.

By Robert Stevens - WSWS

Free and comprehensive health care is set to end with the passage of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government’s Health and Social Care Bill 2011...The National Health Service (NHS), established in 1948 as the centre-piece of Britain’s post-war welfare state, is the world’s oldest and largest taxpayer-funded system. It faces rapid privatization on the basis of introducing a US-style user-pays model.

By Kevin Martinez - 23 January 2012

In the First World War, Britain lost approximately 887,000 men...For every eight soldiers who went to the front, one would not return home. Entire villages were decimated by the war and it was not uncommon for a family to lose all its sons. To this day, World War I remains Britain’s costliest conflict...Any serious artistic treatment of World War I has to take this basic truth into consideration. An artwork that merely uses imperialist war as a backdrop and accepts such a state of affairs as a given...cannot offer any real insight or provide dramatic lessons to its audience.

Revoking Press TV's license was clear irresponsible censorship. Doing so suppressed truth. UK television viewers were deprived of real news, information, commentary and analysis.

By John Pilger - January 19, 2012

The sheer scale of suffering...is little known in the west...That the most numerous victims of terrorism – western terrorism – are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known...While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion.

By Julie Hyland - WSWS

The packaging of austerity measures as a deficit-reduction strategy was always a fiction. Like governments across Europe, the [Conservative-Liberal Democrat] coalition is using the economic crisis caused by the speculative and criminal actions of the super-rich to fundamentally restructure class relations in line with the demands of the finance markets, banks and major corporations...Labour was always at one with this policy...[T]he de facto alliance between Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats against the working class has been made explicit.

By Dennis Moore - 9 January 2012

Welfare cuts will put a further 800,000 homes out of reach of those claiming housing benefit...This month saw the introduction of the capping of housing benefit payments that will leave many low-income families with a stark choice: either to pay the rent by cutting essential spending on food and heating, or move out of the home they are living in.

By Laura Flanders - January 09, 2012

People can debate the successes and failures of “the Thatcher era” all they like. One thing’s for certain: we don’t need a new one, because the old one’s still here. The consequences of the [policies] Thatcher pioneered and made respectable...can be measured in public costs and private profits on both sides of the Atlantic. More damning, even, is the enduring cultural habit of denial...and the political practice of silence — shutting the problem people up.

By Julie Hyland - WSWS

Gary Dobson and David Norris were sentenced this week to 15 and 14 years in prison respectively for the racist killing of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south east London on April 22, 1993...The Metropolitan [London] Police, the judiciary, media and the political establishment proclaim as one that justice has finally been done. Their self-congratulation is not only nauseating, but also misleading.

By Anna Clark - January 4, 2012

Descriptions of women from convicted rapists and from magazines targeting young men in Britain – “lads’ mags” – are indistinguishable, according to a new study slated for publication in the British Journal of Psychology. Researchers...name this as the magazines’ dangerous normalization of “extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context.”

By Dennis Moore - WSWS

Research...has revealed a complete lack of social care for the elderly in the UK, due to large-scale cuts. The number of older people requiring care but receiving nothing will reach almost 900,000 in 2012, rising to 1 million by 2015...Around half a million elderly and vulnerable people have to meet soaring costs to pay for basic care and support in their own homes. In some areas this figure is as high as £10,000 a year, with councils increasing charges for bathing, cleaning and help with shopping.

By Joshua Holland - December 30, 2011

A protester associated with Occupy London was barred from boarding his flight home to Malaga [Spain] for Christmas because he was carrying "anarchist" literature...The demonstrator was kept off the flight because the pilot worried that he would distribute literature and "upset" other passengers.

By Robert Stevens - 27 December 2011

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has recommended that police should be able to use water cannon, rubber bullets and live firearms during any future UK riots...A central consideration of the HMIC in making its recommendations is that the necessary tools of state repression be in place for the Olympic Games, which are to be held in London in the summer of next year.

By Patrick Butler - The Guardian

Unemployed people will have to prove they are actively volunteering in the community in order to qualify for certain welfare benefits and social housing under "civic contract" proposals drawn up by a Conservative local authority...In measures aimed at ending what it calls the "something for nothing culture", Westminster city council also proposes that working families who "play by the rules" should get priority for social housing, while existing tenants who fall foul of the law should be evicted.

SchNEWS - 7th December 2011 | Issue 800

...[P]owerful and idiotic members of the British political elite believe that they can go to war against Iran and win...Iran has 3 times the size and population of Iraq, and has a modern military...and plenty of experience in 'asymmetrical warfare'. Its government is broadly popular, especially when it plays to its a conservative, nationalist, religious base. That base hates Britain almost as much as it hates Israel and the USA.