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Ricky Thompson:
Highest estimated cost of riots: £100m
Tax Avoidance by Vodafone: £6 Billion
Tax spent on Libyan intervention: £1 Billion
Tax avoidance in 2010 by richest people in UK: £7 Billion
Tax payers bill for banking crisis: £131 Billion
......Tax money spent in Iraqi conflict: £4.5 billion
Tax money spent on Afghan conflict (up until 2007): £7 billion
Total MP expenses bill (2007): £87.6m
Perspective: priceless.

• Downtrodden Peasant
  

Haringay shuts 8 youth clubs, crime and robbery go up 100 per cent. correlate that one!

Mark Copestake
For the cost of sending 2 young men to jail for 4 years for setting up a facebook group that didn't cause a riot, you could employ 4 youth workers for 4 years working with up to 200 of the most vulnerable young people per year, or pay a full time youth advice service in 8 large secondary schools (benefiting around 10,000 students) for a year, or you could employ 24 young people on £15k for a year at a time when youth unemployment has reached over 20% Via @milo stephens

Unite youth workers, employed by Oxfordshire county council, decided by a 93% majority to take strike action against the council’s proposed closure of all youth centres, removal of JNC terms and conditions and destruction of the youth work approach to young people. The jobs of 80 youth workers are at risk. The first day of strike action will be held on Tuesday 23rd August in Banbury – there will be picket lines from 7.30am
Please come out and show your support! Oxfordshire youth workers would much rather being doing their jobs, but the council is turning its back on young people:

• The Conservative-led council plans threaten 26 youth centres and two youth teams
• Oxfordshire county council plans to slash youth service funding from £3.7 million to £1.4 million making the county the lowest contributor to youth services in the entire country
• The cuts spell the end of professional youth work in Oxfordshire, replacing qualified youth workers with non-professional managers and volunteers

This is on Cameron’s turf and in his constituency all youth centres will close. The political significance of all of this will not be lost on anyone.
There is great support for this dispute throughout Unite in Oxfordshire and from other unions throughout the county.
There are three things you can do immediately to support their action:

1) Send a message of solidarity to the branch at mike.beal@oxfordshire.gov.uk;

2) Sign the open letter at www.odtuc.org.uk on behalf of your organisation by emailing g.little@odtuc.org.uk by 12noon on Sunday;

3) Join youth workers from 11am outside Banbury Youth Centre and 12 noon outside Banbury Town hall. For details of free transport from Oxford, call 07780760697.

Oxford Area Activists are running a coach on the day timetable as follows:
Leaving BlackBird Leys Youth Centre at 9.30am (East Oxford),The Taylorian Institute St Giles (centre of Oxford) 10.00am, followed by Wolvercote Youth Centre at 10.15 then on to Banbury. The coach contact is Pierre on 077807606971