The pay of all workers is lagging behind inflation. Yet when the doctors' union reps announced their intention to strike from 25-30 July, just as in 2022-24, they made no reference whatsoever to the common cause which unites them with the rest of us.

    So yes, while they are certainly indispensable when it comes to keeping the NHS on its feet, they are not a special case when it comes to exploitation! They could settle their demands in no time if the rest of the working class was on strike with them - and it would be of mutual benefit to all of us, workers and patients alike!

    In 2022-23, during the "summer of discontent" union leaders told strikers in the railways, Royal Mail, the docks and the NHS, that co-ordinating their action would amount to a "general strike" and would be "illegal" - and was therefore out of the question.

    Maybe it was against the law. But the fact is that any fight which is effective will soon become "illegal" from the bosses' point of view, if it was not already so. The legality of the ruling class cannot be accepted as the legality of the working class.

They miscarry "justice"

The same system of law which rules against workers' fights is exposed on the level of the whole of our society by reports from an ever-growing number of public inquiries - investigating cover-ups and downright lies which have resulted in deadly miscarriages of "British justice". Yes, that same imperial system of courts and wigs which has been replicated in former colonies and is regarded as such a great example to the rest of the world!

    So, on the 20th anniversary of the lethal 7/7 terrorist bombings on London Transport, we are reminded that top cops in the Met lied about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train at the Stockwell: contrary to the official version, he did not run away, nor leap over the barriers at the station; he was never even asked to "stop!".

    His family, but also the cops who were ordered to shoot him with multiple dum-dum bullets to the head, won't ever come to terms with this "mistake". However the cop at the top who gave the orders, in the context of what can only be described as a hysterical "official" reaction, has never been held accountable. Indeed, Cressida Dick was even promoted: she was made Chief of the Met in 2017.

    Then this July, volume 1 of the report on the Post Office inquiry was published. The scale of this scandal is breathtaking; thousands of subpostmasters robbed of their life savings and homes, put into unrepayable debt, criminally charged, imprisoned, due to a conscious cover-up and blatant lying all the way to the top of government, over 3 decades.

    More than 3,700 are still waiting for redress; 13 are known to have committed suicide; it's a "cruel and unending trauma" say the victims; the Wyn Williams report speaks of the "disastrous human impact" of this "worst miscarriage of justice", ever. But is the infected blood scandal "less worse"? Its report is also an expose of blatant lying all the way to the top. To date, only 430 of its over 30,000 victims have been compensated; and they are dying...

"Socialism or barbarism"

On the scale of this over-heated planet, the human consequences of "British" official law-breaking is dwarfed by the death and destruction in Gaza, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, and the utter general poverty, famine and war driving refugees into flight.

    But "responsible" politicians everywhere keep the lies going, to keep the profits flowing, no matter what. So the war in Ukraine is encouraged to continue by Starmer, Macron and the so-called "Coalition of the Willing". When, for any sane person the answer would be for Zelensky to give up and make a deal, to end this war of attrition.

    The Coalition's reason to fight on? Also a lie. "Putin" is not an "existential threat" to Europe nor anywhere else, as they claim. Capitulation on the part of Zelensky would however, cut the profits to the western military-industrial complex, which has been promised even more by NATO's new 5% of GDP target for all members. So no surprise that Trump has now changed his tune...

    As for Netanyahu's horrific final solution for Gaza, it's the only truth which his government and Trump's admit to. The silence of the others only means consent.

    So where does all this leave the working class? In fact it's no revelation that the bosses, their system and their government have interests diametrically opposed to ours. We are left with no option but to take them on, regardless of their laws, in order to impose ours - and build a different, socialist system. Because as Labour rebel, Zarah Sultana rightly said, in the final analysis, the choice facing all of us is "socialism or barbarism".