are raising their tuition and related fees higher and higher, forcing students to borrow more and more money to complete their studies. And the trend looks like it will only be getting worse.
Even under Maggie Thatcher the Tories baulked at scrapping the student grant: and yet now, under a "Labour" government, not only has the grant been abolished, but now they want to squeeze even more money out of students!
What does all of this mean for the average student? Hardship, and lots of it. It results in many students having to take unsociable "macjobs" to get by. It means over-crowded classrooms, taught by overworked and under-paid lecturers.
It means the average student walking away with tens of thousands of pounds in debt in an economy that denies many any hope of easily or quickly earning enough to repay it. Julia Brandreth Tenants and residents in South London's Tabard Garden Estate have won an important victory against council house privatisa• tion.
Campaigners were expecting the council to ballot the entire estate at the end of November over whether tenants wished to see the estate transferred to Peabody Housing Association, but the council caved in and cancelled the ballot.
The explanation for the u-turn was not simply the strength of feeling against privatisation on the estate, but the fact assembled around them a dynamic and active campaign. . On the estate there was a very high level of activity from the tenants themselves, with weekly cavalcades around the estate, banner making sessions, public meetings, lobbies of the council and even a Guy Fawkes evening.
Liberal Democrat councillors. Tenants expressed their anger and frustration at both parties for continuing with privatisation two years after tenants across the whole of Southwark won a campaign against entire stock transfer. Councillors seemed so shocked at the strength of feeling that one Liberal Democrat councillor was moved to suggest that both parties lobby the government to call an end to stock transfer nationally.
The Tabard Gardens campaigners are backing the lobby of parliament called by the Defend Council Housing campaign at the end of January, and have already produced their own publicity for it.
Perhaps the councillors will join us there?
page 9 of the scan
Phil Ward
In 19 November, the stricken oil • tanker, the 25-year
bucket Prestige, shuffled off its mortal coil and joined 2-3 million other ships on the ocean floor. It now languishes at a depth of 3000 metres, having disgorged 20,000 tonnes of it cargo of 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. This oil is a residue from the refining process and is used in power stations. It is the most "gloopy" and hence least liable to breakup by waves, which normally helps digestion of oil by bacteria.
The oil is polluting offshore fishing grounds and mussel beds on the Galician coast the Costa da Morte - Coast of Death and will have a devastating effect on local unemployment, for which the compensation level is to be £18 per day. The same area was hit by massive oil spills in old rust ports. ce Winter 2002 9 Casualisation is rife and the campaign report lists many cases of abuse of workers T so diet. The T are 100) his tangle makes pursuing abusers
employees following this murky world of ever-changing ship names, owners and operators and fighting for adherence to safety and working conditions. It particularly opposes flags of convenience