Solidarity 041, 20 November 2003

By Nick Holden The simmering firefighters' dispute is reaching a decisive phase, with a consultative ballot over what both the employers and the FBU's negotiators claim is the 'final' offer. On the surface the pay dispute was buried long ago, and the ballot, like the recent unofficial action taken by many FBU members, is only about a detail: whether the Stage Two of the three-stage pay deal is paid in one 7% increase or two 3.5% increases, one now, and one (backdated) some time next year. The date of the 2004 instalment is vague, being subject to 'verification by the Audit Commission'...

Thousands of police will cram the streets as George W Bush visits Britain. And so will many tens of thousands of people very angry about Bush's bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq, his military build-up, and his blocking of the Kyoto agreement on the environment. Clashes are likely. In fact, if it weren't that the Blair government is so boneheadedly arrogant, you would have to think that they had chosen to fete Bush so ostentatiously only in order to provoke clashes. On May Day 2001 the police also made a large, demonstrative mobilisation. They said there was a danger of "violent demonstrators"...

by David Rees, Serpents Tail Acerbic - like hydrochloric acid is acerbic. That is the only way to describe these cartoons. Rees started producing his cartoon strips shortly after 9/11 and puts them out via his website. Rees documents the anxieties of American society and savages the politics of the Bush administration. His strips are all set inside the office of a nameless corporation and feature stiffs in suits making personal phone-calls to each other. This is not satire for the squeamish, and the politics sometimes jarred with me. Still Rees's work is very much a reflection of the insecure...

The Coen Brothers do romantic comedy? The same Coen brothers who did Fargo, Brother Where Art Thou and other strange, unpredictable, wry takes on life in contemporary America? Not likely, surely? Don't worry, this is a terrific film - a modern Hollywood screwball comedy. The original screwball comedies were made during Great Depression of the 1930s and were both a comment on the world where there is rich and poor and also medication for the poor - wealth and true love could be obtained by anyone. Sexual role-playing and class reversals were the hallmark ingredients. There is certainly lots of...

by Tariq Ali (Verso) Tariq Ali, who achieved fame as figurehead of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s, recently wrote in the Guardian: "It [the Anglo-US presence] is an ugly occupation, and this determines the response... The key fact of the resistance is that it is decentralised - the classic first stage of guerrilla warfare against an occupying army. Yesterday's downing of a US Chinook helicopter follows that same pattern. Whether these groups will move to the second stage and establish an Iraqi National Liberation Front remains to be seen." Bush in Babylon is the book-length...

Wrong number? Black's dead, long live...? Making the links Wrong number? According to a survey by government regulators, the all-new, competitive, market-marvellous telephone directory inquiry services give wrong answers to up to seven in ten inquiries. The worst service, 118 355, gave 67% wrong answers to people with the simplest queries, for a British home number. On average over all the services, 38% of inquiries for British numbers got wrong answers, and 63% of inquiries for overseas numbers. Isn't it wonderful how the free market ensures efficiency? **** When the national rail phone...