General secretary Brendan Barber (pictured) said there could be some "difficult disputes" ahead in the wake of the public sector wage freeze, continued privatisation of services and pension cuts.
Mr Barber, speaking ahead of next week's TUC Congress in Manchester, announced that a campaign is to be launched calling on the public to join unions in defending public services and jobs which he likened to the bitter row over the poll tax when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
"The poll tax was defeated when government MPs returned to Westminster to report that their constituencies were in revolt. The poll tax offended the British people's basic sense of what's fair. So will the spending cuts.
Biden's Delaware: Making Swiss Banking Look Hyper-Clean by Beat J. Guldimann - The Globalist2010/09/07 Combined with the lack of disclosure requirements, the "Delaware Gap" — tax gap, that is — has attracted thousands of U.S. and internationally owned corporations to Wilmington. That is somewhat ironic, considering that the state is just a short 1.5 hour car or train ride from the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
For all of the United States’ prosecutorial vigor, owners of Delaware corporations can hide in plain sight — and better yet, avail themselves of the U.S. legal system with impunity.
This is relevant not only in tax matters where the existing loopholes allow for legal tax avoidance. It is disturbingly relevant in the fight against money laundering committed by organized crime and international terrorist organizations.
FT.com / Columnists / Michael Skapinker - Business should speak up for immigration2010/09/07 Democratic decision-making works best when voters hear both sides. There is no shortage of people complaining about immigration. The case for it should be made by those who stand to benefit – the companies that cannot do without immigrants’ labour and skills. It is time for business leaders to speak up in the press, on radio, on television and to do it every day – not just when one of their staff is denied a work permit.
FT.com / Columnists / Philip Stephens - More than a tale of tabloid skulduggery2010/09/07 Connect the dots. The heir to the British throne jokes with his brother about a visit to a strip club. A reporter goes to jail. Politicians say their mobile telephones were illegally intercepted. The police are accused of conniving in a cover up.
Throw in calls for the sacking of the prime minister’s communications chief and a media group writing hefty cheques to silence, well, the media, and the picture gets murky. That’s before we run into the rivalry between Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and the Sulzberger family’s New York Times.
FT.com / Comment / Analysis - Russia: Chain retraction2010/09/07 But the case in Khamovnichesky district court, on a leafy street near the foreign ministry in Moscow, is about more than the fate of two prominent figures to have emerged from Russia’s turbulent transition to capitalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reputation of PwC, one of the world’s biggest audit firms, will also be in the dock this week in the 18-month trial
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