Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Construction workers need to be better protected by bringing their employers under the Government’s licensing scheme, MPs told ministers this week.

British National Party MEPs Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons sparked outrage within hours of arriving at the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week, as other parliamentarians faced the dilemma of how to react to the two extremists.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu told an invited audience at St Paul’s Cathedral on Monday this week that in the midst of a turbulent and war-ridden world, lawyers have brought a smile to God’s face. “There are times it seems the Almighty himself seems to have mislaid the divine plan”,’ he said. “And then something happens to restore our faith in the human family: like lawyers giving their time for free”.

Unite, Britain’s biggest union, has over 300,000 fewer members than it previously believed, it emerged last week.

The RMT union has called on the Government to take away all the franchises of the troubled National Express rail operator after it was revealed that the firm has made half a billion pounds in profits from its rail operations in the past 10 years while pocketing £2.5 billion from the public purse.

Tory billionaire donor Lord Ashcroft could finally be forced to declare whether he is a tax exile after the Government changed a forthcoming law on party funding this week.

The European Union has signed a groundbreaking deal with Turkey to deliver gas from countries around the Caspian basin straight to the heart of the EU. The £7.75 billion Nabucco pipeline will run from Erzurum in eastern Turkey through Ankara to Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Baumgarten near Vienna in Austria. The project – much talked about and long delayed since it was initially put forward in 2002 – was finally agreed this week, although it is not due to come on stream until 2014.