Western leaders all welcomed the fall of Syria's repressive Assad regime. The same leaders who call the 12-month war of extermination against the Palestinians of Gaza, and the over 3,000 civilian deaths in Lebanon legitimate, because "Israel has the right to defend itself".

    Yes, Netanyahu is "their" brutal proxy; Assad of Syria was not. His brutality was no more, nor less, than that of successive apartheid Zionist regimes of Israel. Although, go further back in time and one finds Tony Blair, sitting in Damascus having tea with Bashar Assad and his wife...

    Indeed be it Starmer, Biden, Trump, Macron, or Scholtz, (or "King" Charles) they have no qualms over the actions of their chosen allies. As Assad was fleeing Damascus, Starmer was dining with the psychopathic Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And he has just been awarded the hosting of the 2034 football World Cup!

    Never mind that workers building his futuristic "Neom City" in the desert are literally enslaved by contractors - under conditions far worse than any suffered by workers in other Gulf States, like that of British close ally, Qatar, or the UAE's Dubai.

    Those workers fleeing Africa's war zones as well as poverty-stricken Nepalese or South Indian workers are promised work on Saudi construction sites. But they are more likely to die, than earn a wage. Pay is withheld and they're forced to live in crowded, filthy conditions in the middle of nowhere, from which there is no escape.

    Bin Salman's regime routinely carries out public executions cutting heads off with swords. Despite supposed liberalisation of laws which designate women as second class - like allowing them to remove their hair covers, or to drive, any woman who tries to take the law at its word, is likely to become a target for repression, including disappearing into prison indefinitely. And as in other Gulf states, women aren't even the legal guardians of their own children.

    But never mind. If these backward feudal leaders "invest" and if they tie themselves to British or US imperialism rather than the Russians or Chinese, Starmer/Biden/Trump will gladly "waltz" with them into the sunset.

    Indeed this British government, along with its US partner in crime, consciously created the conditions for the fall of Assad by giving Netanyahu the blank cheque he always wanted to invade and bomb Gaza, Lebanon, and now Syria... And Iran next?

    With the help of Turkey's Erdogan (who has his own interests to serve) - the unlikely extremist militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, now "in power", will no doubt be expected to play the imperialists' game too...

    As for the Syrian people, they may have gained respite from Assad - but given the mayhem which imperialism has unleashed in the region, it is unlikely to last long.

Labour's "Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act" sets the stage for the renationalisation of the railways in Britain over the next 3+ years. However, the day after the bill became law, then-Transport Secretary Louise Haigh suddenly resigned! She said she "didn't want to be a distraction" after one newspaper exposed an already-known minor misdemeanour she'd committed 10 years before...

    Nobody bought this. In fact, for Labour's pro- business image, she was already a distraction. During Starmer's fancy "Investment Summit" she'd criticised private ferry company P&O over the way it treated its workforce, just when Starmer was wooing its owner, Dubai's DP World for investment. And "worse", she also agreed a pay rise for train drivers!

    The more "business-friendly" Heidi Alexander, will now oversee rail renationalisation. But in fact, 40% of the railways have already been taken back by the state under the Tories! And if the remainder will now join them, it's only because they aren't viable and profitable businesses. The yearly government subsidy to private rail operators has nearly tripled to £13bn since 2019! Private operators have never been prepared to invest to keep the railways running reliably and safely. Just like Thames Water, in fact, whose profit-making and total lack of investment has poisoned rivers and the water in the taps!

    Today 30% of trains don't run on time. There is a shortage of workers across the network. All the Train Operating Companies rely on overtime and rest-day working to run even a basic timetable. And just like those other bosses at the "public service" (but privatised) Royal Mail, they use agency workers to deliver a service that's going down the drain.

    So, will anything change when the state runs the railways? Starmer already said there's no spare cash. For his government, there's no question of taking the money from the billions in profits that railway companies and shareholders have made over the past 30 years!

    Alexander will try to keep the current 100 + divisions, where each line, station or section doesn't just have different livery and uniforms, but also different Ts&Cs for workers. Yes, because the 220,000-strong railway workforce is potentially a force to be reckoned with, if it comes together as "one". Which is why, precisely, railway workers know exactly what they have to do!