Lead story

Housing bubble about to burst?

by Caroline Colebrook

ECONOMISTS are predicting that a downturn in London’s buy-to-let property market could be the first sign of the imminent bursting of the housing bubble that has drawn up the price of homes and rents to ridiculous heights — but which has sustained Chancellor George Osborne’s claims of growth in our economy.

The rising prices have attracted many investors to become landlords as a quick way to get rich, using buy-tolet mortgages to buy the properties and then let them out.

A small rise in interest rates can trigger a mass selloff of these properties, resulting in a sudden crash in prices. This has a domino effect, as the sub-prime mortgage collapse in the United States showed in 2007/8.

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Housing bubble about to burst?

Welcome refugees, unite against Islamophobia, racism and fascism

by New Worker correspondent

MORE THAN 200 anti-fascists and anti-racists packed into the main hall of the National Union of Teachers’ Hamilton House headquarters in Euston last weekend for the annual conference of Unite Against Fascism.

The main themes of the meeting were combatting Islamophobia and campaigning for the British government to accept its fair share of the hundreds of thousands of refugees now fleeing imperialist wars in Africa and the Middle East.

There was also a lot of practical talk about building support for a giant “Stand up to Racism” demonstration to be held in London on Saturday 19th March, to coincide with United Nations Anti-Racism Day. The demonstration will assemble at noon in Portland Place, London W1A, outside the BBC headquarters.

There were speakers from a wide range groups and struggles and organisations fighting racism and fascism — from those who had been literally fighting Nazi thugs in Dover the previous week to a French Holocaust survivor.

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Welcome refugees, unite against Islamophobia, racism and fascism

Editorial

Victory in Syria

THE SYRIAN army has surrounded the rebel-held enclave in Aleppo in a new offensive that has liberated swathes of territory in the north of the country.

As usual the willing media tools of imperialism and the “human rights” gang are bleating on about the plight of civilians trapped in the terrorist-held enclaves to justify calls on Russia to halt their bombing and for Syria to accept a cease-fire in advance of any meaningful progress to end the conflict. When the sectarian militias were winning these people said little or nothing about the plight of the Syrian civilians massacred or enslaved by ISIS and its cohorts. Now the boot’s on the other foot so they blame the Syrian government for the collapse of the Geneva peace talks and clamour for a unilateral cease-fire to give the terrorists, who have been less than covertly funded and armed by Nato and the feudal Arab kings, a breathing space to save their skins and fight again.

The Geneva talks were doomed from the start. The Saudi—Turkish “Riyadh” group sabotaged it by demanding impossible pre-conditions from the Syrian government that they refuse to recognise in the hope that a breakdown would lead to Nato supplies of sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons or even direct imperialist intervention against the Assad government.

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Victory in Syria