News

By Darragh Roche Sitting in a packed Starbucks across from the Brandenburg Gate a few years ago, a Berlin-based friend pointed out the former Soviet embassy across the street, once the largest in the world. Sipping a frothy cappuccino in a café where the staff spoke English, I didn’t realise we were in the former East Berlin. The old heart of the repressive communist state is now crowded with pricey shops, American coffee chains and oblivious tourists. Starbucks, the shibboleth of...

By Callum Towler When the Tories claimed a surprise majority back in May, we knew debilitating cuts were inevitable. Today, in his Autumn Statement, we’ll find out exactly where George’s Osborne’s axe will fall. Conservative ideology involves a ruthless commitment to shrinking the state. Balancing this with ambitions of winning an election in 2020 means targeting cuts at groups least likely to vote Conservative: the young and working poor. While safe-guarding mid to high income earners and pensioners, who turn out...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Charities could be irrelevant by 2030 if business leaders put global prosperity on a par with profit, according to eco-entrepreneur Arthur Kay. The 24-year-old founder of innovative green energy business bio-bean and recent Green Challenge and Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year winner, will call on fellow entrepreneurs to spell out how their future business models will actively create a fair, clean, green and equal world at the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity (IGP) event, Countdown 2030,...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor It appears that tensions between Turkey and Russia are continuing to grow today, following the shooting down of a Russian jet yesterday. Mr Putin has said that he will send a new air defence system to Syria. alongside that he has despatched a warship to the Mediterranean sea. The advanced S-400 air defence system will be taken to a Russian base in the Latakia area of Syria, their defence minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed. To add...

By James Clark The Thatcherite legacy has remained ingrained in the centre right consensus of mainstream political politics for decades. The Winter of Discontent hammered the final nail of stigma into the British Trade Union movement. Whilst a crisis of supply side inflationary pressure eat away at pay packets, strikes were the only reasonable means of maintaining a decent standard of living for the average public sector worker. Thatcher’s response in countering these external supply shocks was to obliterate workers pay,...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A video of Syrian rebels allegedly hitting a Russian-made helicopter, and killing a Marine, which was searching for the pilots of the su-24 jet downed today on the Turkey/Syria border, has emerged. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, it was struck with an anti-tank missile. It is claimed a Russain marine was killed during the operation. In the film released by the FSA a missile can be seen travelling towards the helicopter, which...

By Steve Taggart First it was hackers Anonymous now the Mafia has joined the fight against ISIS. A member of the notorious Gambino New York crime family has warned it not to try anything in the big apple, as it is under Mafia protection. The Mafia has apparently enjoyed a revival in America in the last few years as funding has been diverted away from fighting organised crime into the global threat of terrorism. In a TV interview Giovanni Gambino,...

By Harold Stone Austerity comes from the Ancient Greek austērós meaning harshness, sourness or bitterness. It roughly translates as “to singe the tongue”. From this idea of discomfort, an austere person came to mean a stern person, someone who treats others harshly. One of the slaves in the Bible for example, says to his master “I feared thee, because thou art an austere man”. Around the time Christians started to denounce the world (“do not love the world nor the...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A muslim lady was subjected to an anti-muslim rant during a journey on public transport, luckily other passengers stepped in to stop the abuse and eject the culprit. Ruhi Rehman, 23 from Newcastle was told she was going to "bomb the train" and told her it was "my country." Ruhi was sitting quietly on a Metro service - Newcastle-upon-Tyne's version of the London Underground - when a man demanded she get off the train. Luckily...