The LLW is a London-specific minimum wage, which takes into account the higher costs of living in the capital city, and includes a minimum holiday entitlement and sick pay, and gives workers the right to join a Trades Union. The LLW is currently £7.60 per hour, £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage.

The implementation of the wage follows a motion passed by the ULU Senate last year which requested an investigation into the prospect of implementing the higher Wage.

Nizam Uddin, ULU President, believes employers have a responsibility for staff; “The Living Wage is an absolutely essential wage for those most vulnerable in our society to be able to live with dignity, whilst providing a basic standard of living for them and their families.

“Our determination for the LLW to be introduced prompted us to put the cleaning services out to tender, with the stipulation of Living Wage being an option.” During the transition, current staff will be able to keep their jobs under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, and will simply transfer to the new company.

Uddin and ULU Vice-President worked with ULU staff and campaign group London Citizens to achieve the deal.

ULU is not yet an officially verified Living Wage employer however, because other staff such as students working in bars do not get paid the Living Wage. Uddin said that within feasible financial limits, they had to prioritise the most vulnerable groups, since students did have better access to loans and grants.

However, he added that he hoped next year’s ULU President could take the project further and look into rolling-out the Living Wage across all employees. Birkbeck College pays the Living Wage to staff except those working in the bar, which is currently run by ULU.

The Souk: The Launch of the Street Children Project and a Celebration of Morocco

The Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre244 Acklam Road, W10 5YG Saturday, 13^th March 2010, 4pm-8pm

To celebrate the launch of its Street Children project, the Moroccan Children’s Trust will bring you the hustle and bustle of the souk, brimming with the sounds and flavours of Moroccan culture. With family-friendly activities for all  – drumming workshops, art exhibitions, henna, shopping and delicious food – you can enjoy the Souk in London!

The Moroccan Children’s Trust is a UK registered charity, established in 2008. In partnership with Groupe Maroc Horizons, a well-known NGO in Taroudannt, South Morocco, we run social and educational development schemes. Our volunteer programme fosters global links, which aim to encourage a better understanding of Morocco, and its culture.

This event launches our exciting project to research and assist street children in Morocco. Currently, we are researching the problems faced by street children and their hopes for the future. This data will help us create a youth centre offering the healthcare and counselling services, that will best meet their needs.

We hope to see you at “The Souk”, where we can celebrate Moroccan culture and launch our street children project. With your support we can provide the children with services that will improve their lives. Together, we can build brighter futures for Moroccan children.

Unless negotiations with management produce a change in the college’s position that 205 jobs must be cut, members of the University and College Union (UCU), the lecturers union, will open a ballot for industrial action this Thursday (March 4th.)

Jim Wolfreys, chair of KCL UCU branch, told the Times Higher Education supplement: “People feel there is no alternative.” He claimed that senior management were “not listening” and said that he was “expecting a high turnout and a ‘yes’ vote”.

Wolfreys continued: “There is more anger than I have ever seen at King’s. There is a sense that management are not in control of the situation… We have never had a local ballot for action. That, as much as anything else, is an indication of the strength of feeling.”

The School of Arts and Humanities is particularly affected by the college’s plans to cut back. All 220 academic staff have been told they will have to re-apply for their jobs.

The college’s plans include abolishing the UK’s only chair in palaeography – the study of ancient handwriting – and making redundant several high profile scholars from the Department of Philosophy.

There has been outcry from academic peers in London, across the country and internationally.
Academics are arguing that any loss of jobs at the college would damage KCL’s reputation internationally and “lead to an increase in workloads of those who survive the cull and inevitably impact most seriously on students”.

KCL insist that the final decisions have not been taken regarding any potential redundancies, and won’t be until the end of the consultation with staff.

A spokesperson said the college was “extremely disappointed” about the decision to ballot for industrial action.

“Following discussions between UCU and King’s on 22 February, the college formally reiterated a desire to respond to the concerns raised by the union and to continue discussions. The college believes a ballot on industrial action before these discussions have concluded is ill advised, particularly during a time of financial strain.

“There is particular concern that industrial action will impact on exams and that our students, who have worked so hard towards these, will suffer as a result.”

The UCU claims that the college has £180 million in reserves, and has attacked the decision to proceed with the acquisition of the east wing of Somerset House at a cost of £20 million.

King’s has responded that this has been acquired on a leasehold, funded largely by a specific government grant and a £20 million fundraising campaign.

The ballot at King’s comes as universities nationwide make cut backs in the wake of funding reductions. After a vote on industrial action at Leeds University, progress was made in negotiations; at Sussex University staff are currently balloting.

On Saturday staff and students came together for a ‘teach-in’ at King’s called ‘Take Back Education’, where speakers like Terry Eagleton made the case for opposing cuts in universities.

Despite the plans, the Union will save £30,000 a year on all cleaning services by switching to an alternative company, LPM Ltd, after the cleaning contract was put out to tender in November last year.

The LLW is a London-specific minimum wage, which takes into account the higher costs of living in the capital city, and includes a minimum holiday entitlement and sick pay, and gives workers the right to join a Trades Union. The LLW is currently £7.60 per hour, £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage.

The implementation of the wage follows a motion passed by the ULU Senate last year which requested an investigation into the prospect of implementing the higher Wage.

Nizam Uddin, ULU President, believes employers have a responsibility for staff; “The Living Wage is an absolutely essential wage for those most vulnerable in our society to be  able to live with dignity, whilst providing a basic standard of living for them and their families.

“Our determination for the LLW to be introduced prompted us to put the cleaning services out to tender, with the stipulation of Living Wage being an option.” During the transition, current staff will be able to keep their jobs under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, and will simply transfer to the new company.

Uddin and ULU Vice-President worked with ULU staff and campaign group London Citizens to achieve the deal.

ULU is not yet an officially verified Living Wage employer however, because other staff such as students working in bars do not get paid the Living Wage.

Uddin said that within feasible financial limits, they had to prioritise the most vulnerable groups, since students did have better access to loans and grants.

However, he added that he hoped next year’s ULU President could take the project further and look into rolling-out the Living Wage across all employees.

Birkbeck College pays the Living Wage to staff except those working in the bar, which is currently run by ULU.

Chaw is the story of a freakishly large swine with an appetite for human flesh that terrorises a small Korean village. It’s up to the new cop in town, officer Kim and his hapless helpers to stop the porcine menace!

We have three copies of Chaw to give away, to you the reader. To win, simply describe to us how you would defeat and kill a giant homicidal boar?

The three best answers (funniest, most creative, etc) chosen by the London Student will win. Simply email your answer with your name, address, mobile and email address to play.screen@london-student.net.

Chaw is released by Optimum Releasing, certificate 15 on March 1st

Then, today walking past a giant Clinton’s on my way to uni, I was faced with the words ‘TELL YOUR LOVED ONE HOW MUCH YOU CARE’ plastered across the windows in luminous pink, with a few banners even proclaiming, ‘SHOW THEM THAT YOU LOVE THEM’. Is it just me, or is the idea of Valentine’s Day as a day where you are supposed to express just how much you love your boyfriend/ girlfriend/ partner/ cabbage making a mockery of relationships?

I can’t help but think that surely, when in a relationship, you would tell each other how you felt about one another a bit more regularly than just on the 14^th February, perhaps, oh I don’t know, when the mood strikes you at any point during the other 364 days of the year? It annoys me how people feel that on this one particular day of the year they must festoon gifts, cards with pictures of cute, fluffy chicks or bears in love on it and kisses all over their loved one (or even someone they just picked up, to avoid the singleton valentine’s depression) in order to express something that I would hope they would feel all year round. I personally would take no pleasure in creating a saccharine, chocolatey, syrupy love-mess to rub all over myself and my boyfriend for one particular day, with no real purpose than to fulfil a commercial expectation. I know how I feel about him, so why should I make a massive song and dance about it on Valentine’s Day because Clinton’s and my local Thai restaurant are telling me to?

So, if you know how you feel for someone else, or if you’re single this Valentine’s, please appreciate just how ridiculous, overblown and controlling this one day is. But if your relationship requires the 14^th February solely to be the day of romance and telling each other just how much you love and care for one another, I’d urge you to find someone new to date who doesn’t waste those other 364 days of the year.

The reason? The UK Government wants to force the Catholic Church to open all lay positions within its bureaucracy in this country to everyone, independent of their orientation.

The Catholic Church claims that homosexuality is contrary to the laws of nature and so argues that it would be inappropriate to employ people who do not live up to its exacting moral standards. The UK government, on the other hand, argues that it would be wrong to give the Catholic Church a special “opt-out” of the same 2006 Equalities Act which holds fast for every other employer in this country.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, secularists and gay rights organisations such as Stonewall have all been protesting against the Pope’s pleas to grant the Catholic Church precisely this opt-out. However, far from being an apparently clear-cut case of unjust discrimination by one party (the Church) against another (gay people), we are stuck, I think, in a serious moral dilemma with no easy resolution.

What we are faced with is a conflict between two fundamental human rights. On the one hand, the Pope argues that to force it to follow through this new “Equality Bill”, if it becomes law, will impose “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”. In other words, the Catholic Church will be forced to do something it believes is immoral.

Yet the UK Government is also entrusted with a mandate to preserve the equal liberties of all of its citizens, irrespective of their beliefs. To refuse to employ people according to their gender preference may be construed, moreover, as a breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.

With whom should we side? I’m not too sure: what I worry about, however, is the temptation the government may experience to compel the Catholic Church to follow the law irrespective of any effective consultation.

To date, the United States has been the single biggest contributor to the relief effort in Haiti, donating $466 million. They’ve sent doctors, reopened the airports and docks, and have unbolted their doors to refugees and orphaned children. They have also dispatched 16,000 armed servicemen to the island, in order to stabilise what is an altogether shattered isle.

In spite of their unsurpassed generosity, the United States has come in for severe criticism. Guido Bertolaso called the effort a ‘pathetic’ failure; Peter Hallward argued that ‘the relief effort resemble[s] a military invasion’. Ashley Smith even blamed the United States for the devastation itself, concluding that the: “fault line of U.S. imperialism interacted with the geological one to turn the natural disaster into a social catastrophe”.

President Clinton has too been condemned for his role as head of the United Nations’ relief effort: Bertolaso accused him of putting on a ‘vanity show for the television cameras’; Hallward preposterously stated that: “Clinton’s main job has been to emphasise the need for further investment in the garment industry – basically more sweatshops”.

This sort of denigration is wholly unfounded and baseless, and is grounded in a hideously ill-informed, anti-capitalist political discourse. Firstly, caricatured attacks on Clinton’s moral fibre are without foundation when his in-office economic achievements and recent humanitarian efforts are judged comparatively. Second, condemnations of the United States’ contributions to the disaster relief effort are but shabbily-veiled, poorly-conceived and terribly-executed diatribes which seek to blame Western liberal democratic capitalism – or better yet the United States itself – for all Haiti’s ills.

In fact, Haiti’s misfortunes are not the fault of unregulated capitalism or American manipulation. The real issue is an economic model rampant with corruption, an ambivalence toward private property and superfluous bureaucratic mechanisms, suffocating the ability of the market to formulate a stable trading environment and create the abundances of wealth prevalent throughout the Western hemisphere.

Moreover, the prominent example of the United States exerting pressure in Haiti since the end of the Second World War has been Operation Uphold Democracy, a quite evidently positive example of liberal interventionism when the rightfully elected president Aristide was returned to power after a military coup.

There are times when it is justified to criticise the United States, but in this instance it’s indefensible. Although far from perfect, she is a force for good in this world. Ronald Reagan was correct to call America the ‘shining city upon a hill’, for she is a beacon, the guardian of the spirit of freedom. Vicious attacks from Europe only serve to demonstrate our cynical disconnect from the true, heartfelt intentions of American action in Haiti. In truth it is Europe, not the United States, who ought to reflect on the role they are playing in rebuilding a shattered nation.

Yet the outlook is grim. British government debt is above 12% of GDP, about the same as Greece who’s debt is causing chaos on financial markets. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling anxiously say that this borrowing binge has been in the cause of fighting the recession by replacing private spending with government spending. The billions paid out to banks were, we are told, necessary to prop up the banking system.

This is dishonest. As chancellor Gordon Brown borrowed millions even in the boom years, a mistake no first year economics undergraduate would make. Since 2002, long before banks came rattling the begging bowl, Brown’s spending still managed to outstrip ballooning tax receipts. The shocking level of government debt is not down to fighting the recession or saving banks but is due to years of Brown’s fiscal incontinence.

The debt will have severe consequences. The mountain of debt is scaring off the international capital markets Brown is borrowing from. Gilt yields, the price the government pays to borrow money, are rising. These higher rates will attract capital towards government debt causing rising interest rates throughout the economy. The effects of this on the weak recovery would be disastrous.

Brown shows little sign of understanding the depth of the catastrophic state of the national finances. His pre budget report in December was a list of giveaways for favoured Labour voting groups. With donors fleeing the Labour Party Brown is beholden for funding to the trade unions who are concentrated in the very public services where the axe will have to fall. Would he be in any position, in the unlikely event of an election victory, to force his paymasters to accept the drastic cuts needed to restore financial health?

Tax rises are the alternative. Given that UK government debt amounts to over £23,000 per person the tax rises needed to bridge this gap would be immense. Even without this, by 2013, 9p in every pound paid in taxes will be spent, not on nurses and teachers, but on servicing British government debt.

Continued borrowing would invite a greater economic catastrophe than we’ve just been through. The alternatives are brutal spending cuts or savage tax rises. None of this will be pleasant. It is, however, the inevitable, disastrous outcome of nearly a decade of massive Labour spending.

The government which, in 1997, inherited the best set of economic circumstances since before World War One from the Conservatives will, probably, in 2010, leave them the worst set of economic circumstances since World War Two. That is the story of this government.

There is little I find more contemptible than the idea of men poring over the latest issue of FHM or page 3 of the Sun. The objectification of women is something which civilised society should have moved on from decades ago, and yet there it is, ready and waiting in our local newsagent. However, my scruples found themselves in somewhat of a predicament, when I heard of the motion at the LSE UGM to ban these publications from their student union, on the grounds that they are sexist and pornographic. The motion fell, and I have to say, I am a little relieved.

Imagine that the students attending the UGM had voted in favour of the ban. They found the publications unsavoury or offensive, even, and stopped them being sold in the Union. It would have been decided upon democratically and fairly, and if there were students at LSE who did want to buy them, then there would be nothing to stop them buying the magazines elsewhere. Now imagine that the majority of students at LSE hate socialists, or liberals, or Tories as much as they hate page 3, and they democratically and fairly decide to stop selling publications deemed to espouse the view that they find offensive.

For the Sun and FHM to be on sale in the LSE student union in the first place, there would have to be a demand for them from the students there. After all, it makes no business sense to buy in newspapers and magazines that won’t get bought. By banning them, the Union would effectively be stipulating to its students what they should and should not read. Everyone is entitled to hold an opinion, political or otherwise, but when the majority willingly delimits the voice or resources of the minority, especially if that majority speaks for an institution that should remain objective, hasn’t a very important line been crossed?

The obvious exception to this rule is when the opinion in question begins to damage other peoples’ civil rights, and I suppose that this is the argument that those who tried to pass the motion used. However, the women modelling for these magazines are not forced into it, they choose to do so, and many declare themselves empowered by it. The line between what some women consider sexual emancipation, and what others consider objectification, is blurred to say the least. But we shouldn’t want it any other way.

These days, as a society, we are exposed to a thousand different views on any one matter. On the internet, on television, in leaflets, or down the pub, and though we may find some of these views offensive or distasteful, they play a significant part in shaping our own opinions on these matters. When even one of these factors is removed, we become less equipped to formulate an opinion, and debate on the issue will stagnate, and eventually turn sour. However strongly an individual or group may believe in their own righteousness, however much we might agree with it, we should know by now that giving them the power to remove opposing ideas from the playing field is a grievous assault on everybody’s freedom.