family win victory at last Socialist Resistance is extremely pleased to report the success of the Ay family's campaign for the right to remain in Germany.
More than fifteen years after Mr and Mrs Ay first fled from Turkey, Mrs Ay and her four children were granted temporary leave to remain in Germany on humanitarian grounds.
Their fear of being sent to Turkey was not only based on the fact that none of the four children had ever set foot in the country but that MrAy has not been heard of since he was deported there from Germany several years ago.
This campaign, which we have covered several times in Resistance over the last two years, reached a particular height when the family were imprisoned in Dungavel immigration prison in Scotland for over a year.
Beriwan, then fourteen, wrote to the press and captured the hearts of many in Scotland who had not previously realised that children too are victims of the shameful immigration detention regime that exists in Britain. MSP Rosie Kane, together with other figures from the labour movement and churches in Scotland rallied to their cause, but despite vigorous action in their support they were deported to Germany because it was the first EU country they had travelled to on leaving
Their eventual success reminds us that mobilising to defeat immigration laws and their implementation is always worth it and sometimes brings success. John Lister, London Health Emergency www.healthemergency.org.uk JUST DAYS after a firm of hard-nosed New York-based trouble-shooters was flown in to sort out the growing financial crisis in the first failing Foundation Trust, a highpowered hit-squad from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has been brought in to press home a package of cuts on a South London NHS Trust which is facing a deficit estimated at between £20 and £35 million.
These two episodes underline a dramatic worsening of the financial plight of many NHS Trusts around the coun try, as government targets and a new funding system have combined to push many of them deep into the red.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had already run up a growing cash shortfall, and was predieting a £4 million deficit after just six months as one of the very first Foundation Trusts to get the go-ahead from the independent regulator (the office established to scrutinise the running of foundation trusts, now known as Monitor).
The city whiz-kids, Alvarez
Marsal (A&M), were chosen and called in by Monitor: but the costs of flying in a team of "turnaround management consultants" will have to be paid by the Bradford Trust.
Monitor claimed there were advantages in bringing in advice from outside the
but staff in the Bradford Trust are likely to see it differently.
The same is certainly true of PWC's costly involvement in the chronic financial diffiShock treatment may kill rather than cure struggling NHS Trusts culties of St George's Hospital in Tooting, where the Trust (like many others around the country has been struggling to cope with a massive increase in emergency admissions on top of ambitious government targets to reduce waiting times.
The first proposals towards clearing the Trust's massive debt include axing 24 beds and deleting 100 vacant posts - but clearly much more savage cutbacks will be required to go anywhere near the £20m target.
But if it is now becoming routine to respond to soaring deficits by wheeling in highcost management consultants, the impact on NHS front-line services will be even heavier.
Meanwhile the problems that have tripped up the Bradford Trust are set to trigger a wave of cash crises among front-line hospital Trusts across the country from next April.
Under a controversial new "payment by results" system, each hospital will be paid a fixed amount for each operation and treatment they carry out, in place of the current system of block contracts.
This policy, effectively