British News for British Readers

While Britain's been busy gallivanting across the Middle East there have been some quite important political upheavals going on within the countries own borders;

Lindsey Oil Refinery Strikes. Strike action at the Total refinery began in January 2009 when construction workers walked out in protest against the French oil companies practice of busing in cheap Italian labour without offering the jobs to local workers. As the snow fell across the UK and the country came within 48 hours of running out of natural gas Total rushed to settle the dispute and through the mysteries of trade union negotiation 102 new posts were created from British workers.
In June with the weather improving and memories of the original dispute beginning to fade Total, who invest heavily in Burma, decided to take their retaliation for the strike and made 56 workers redundant. The other workers responded to this by staging another wildcat (illegal) strike. This prompted Total to sack all the strikers in a move that backfired badly when oil refinery workers across the country walked out in support of their colleagues.
Total have now realised that unless they resolve the dispute soon they will go out of business and another company will take over the Lindsey oil refinery. As a result they are now negotiating with the unions while one union, the GMB, are considering balloting their members about possible strike action against the oppressive anti-strike legislation that made the inital strike illegal.

Romanians Forced Out of Northern Ireland. Last week 100 Romanian families were forced to leave their homes and take up shelter in a local church after enduring a week of sustained, racist attacks. Although the local police put on a bit of a show by arresting a couple of local teenagers the attacks against the Romanians and the church that was sheltering them. Now all but 14 of the families have announced they are to flee Britain for good.
The forcible expulsion of lawful immigrants has long been a cornerstone of the British National Parties policies. The BNP have not been elected nor has there been any parliamentary vote on the matter yet their policies have somehow become official British policy. It's so nice to live in a democracy(!)

BNP Injunction Threat. The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) have threatened the BNP with and injunction unless the revoke a membership clause that prevents non-whites becoming party members. At first this appears as if an apparatus of the state, the CRE, is finally getting tough on the BNP. In reality they're actually doing the BNP a massive favour. You see one of the biggest problems the BNP have in getting elected is that they are such an openly racist party. Every time the BNP try and deny this critics simply point out that they don't allow non-whites to join the party so by dropping the whites only clause, on paper at least, the BNP will be able to portray themselves as a more mainstream party.

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Visits London. Zimbabwean Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvanagari, visited London over the weekend and was forced to endure a rather public and rather staged booing at Southwark Cathedral. The purpose of his visit was to secure international support to held rebuild his damaged country. Britain pledged to provide £5million for school books that will be provided by British aid agencies but refused direct government to government aid or development loans that can be a nice little earner for the donor country. Britain also refused to lift the economic sanctions that are preventing the Zimbabweans from improving the country themselves. From that it seems clear that Britain couldn't care less what happens to the Zimbabwean people just as long as they're prepared to blame all their problems on Robert Mugabe.

I know that most people won't think that last story is much of a concern for British people but who do you think is paying to enforce those sanctions?