The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, spoke to the delegates gathered for the TUC conference in Manchester last week. But why was he there?

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in Britain is made up of and advised by millionaires and billionaires. And while they live a life that millions would dream of, they spend their time investigating how much they can cut spending on social services, healthcare, education and pensions. The contradiction is clear for all to see.

In 1948 all the Tory MPs in the House of Commons dutifully voted against the setting up of the National Health Service. For more than sixty years since, the NHS has been one of our most loved institutions, relied on by millions of people to look after their health. The Tories have publicly regretted their stance and pledged that, “the NHS is safe in our hands.” We now see that was a lie. If new Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans, called ‘Liberating the NHS’, goes through the NHS will be in tatters in five years time.

Seventy years ago this week the “phoney war” well and truly ended and the mass bombing of London and other keys cities by the Nazi Luftwaffe began. The Blitz, as it was to become known, cost the lives of thousands of workers as the nightly bombing raids from Germany laid waste to both houses and industry.

The Labour leadership election contest will be ending in September as the ballot papers finally go out. It could have been an opportunity to discuss a balance-sheet of the right-wing control of the party under New Labour and an opportunity to discuss a socialist programme in face of the worst capitalist crisis since the 1930s. However, the contest has left most people cold.

When David Cameron announced "The Big Society" (a name nicked from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson who used it in the '60s) during the election, most people laughed and assumed that would be the last we would hear of it. Tory spokespeople said that they had no idea what it meant and one Tory MP described it as "Bollocks." Indeed. However, now safely inside Number 10, Cameron has brought up it up again.

Journalists usually refer to August as the silly season. It is in that context that we have the latest madcap idea to come from the Con-Dem coalition. According to plans leaked by the Guardian newspaper, council housing tenancies will no longer be ‘for life.’

Today 6th August is the 20th anniversary of the death of Marxist MP and class fighter Pat Wall. In his memory we publish a tribute to him by Rob Sewell.

We conclude Dan Morley's three part study of the crisis inside UK housing.

Capitalism could only expand (and in a very chaotic, unbalanced, top-heavy fashion) the national housing stock through an enormous speculative bubble which only stored up greater problems for today. Now we find ourselves in the farcical situation of having a desperate, long-term housing shortage, and at the same time hundreds of thousands of unemployed construction workers, idle land and idle brick factories etc.

The question of housing in Britain today reveals much about the character of the crisis that permeates our entire society. Through the medium of housing we can see almost every problem our society faces - from inequality to out of control speculation, health problems to overcrowding, groaning infrastructures to gross regional imbalances and distortions.

More than a century after the formation of the Labour Party, the party still remains rooted in the organised working class. Despite everything, the results of the recent general election confirm the ingrained support for Labour throughout the working class areas of Britain.

The draconian budget rolled out in June is only the first instalment in a five year programme of austerity to be inflicted upon the British people. The Tory-dominated government is telling us that the economy is in a hole. This is true. They are softening us up for drastic cuts in public spending, saying we can’t afford it and (in the words of Thatcher) that there is no alternative. This is a lie.

“Open for business.” These were the words spoken by chancellor George Osborne as he delivered the most vicious anti-working class budget for generations – a budget for big business indeed! Not since the slash and burn days of the National government in the 1930s, or indeed the Thatcher regime of the early 1980s, have so many cuts been presented in one day. Indeed in outlining a target of 25% cutbacks in many areas of government spending, the coalition has gone way beyond anything attempted by previous chancellors in office.

The news is full of the plans of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to hammer the public sector in the interests of the ruling class. But “the best laid schemes of mice and men, go often askew,” as Robbie Burns wrote. This is precisely what happened to Ted Heath's government.