We have been waging a campaign against work accidents which are rampant in Turkey.

Central to the campaign is a petition to be finally submitted to parliament. Hundreds of UID-DER activists worked hard during the campaign which has the main slogan: “Work Accidents are not Destiny, Stop Workers Dying of Work Accidents!”

During the campaign about 500,000 people have been contacted face to face. We have already surpassed our specific goal which was 100,000 signatures.

The “personal” problems of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, have created a major political storm.

The Tory press has been scandalised by revelation that Flowers bought and used Class A drugs. Flowers had had to resign as a local councillor over other problems, and had a record of dubious expenses claims.

Earlier this year, the Co-op announced that it had made a pre-tax loss of over £709 million, with the profits it had made in its supermarkets wiped out by bad debts in its banking arm.

After a spike because of the 2011 public sector pensions dispute, the level of strikes in the UK fell to a seven-year low in 2012.

Royal Mail, a key bastion of public sector unionism and industrial strength, was privatised in October 2013 without any effective resistance. A strike planned for 4 November was called off and anyway was called after the privatisation had gone through.

Saturday 30 November will see the founding conference of Left Unity.

Left Unity was launched in late 2012 by Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin. It reached a wider audience after film maker Ken Loach and left-wing academic Gilbert Achcar sent an open letter to the Guardian in March 2013, promoting Left Unity as a new party to challenge Labour from the left.

On 22 November something odd happened. The Daily Express published an article which implicitly criticised one of Michael Gove’s key reforms to education and quoted, approvingly and prominently, the condemnation of this policy by Labour Education Minister, Tristram Hunt.

The article also reported the comments of NUT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney to support the thrust of their story.

The Defend the Link campaign, boosted by a decision from the Labour Representation Committee conference on 23 November to build it “as widely as possible”, is circulating a “model response” to the interim report by Ray Collins on the Labour-union link.

Collins was asked to write the report by Labour leader Ed Miliband after Miliband’s 9 July speech calling for a change in union-Labour relations in the wake of lurid allegations about the Unite union’s activities in Falkirk CLP.

Ifa Muaza, a refugee from Nigeria, has been on hunger strike for over 80 days after his request for asylum was rejected by the Home Office.

Muaza is being held at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, near Heathrow. His lawyer argues that keeping him in detention amounts to a death sentence, and staff at the centre have been warned to expect a detainee to die.

International climate talks in Warsaw ended in disarray on Sunday 24 November. NGOs and trade union delegates walked out in disgust at the lack of ambition and progress.

After international unions, Greenpeace, WWF, ActionAid, FoE, Oxfam, Aksyon Klima Pilipinas and other NGOs had walked out, a statement said governments “cannot be trusted to do what the world needs”.

The first part of the Keogh Report into urgent and emergency care was published last week. It claims it will lead a complete overhaul of the system it acknowledges is at breaking point. 

The numbers of people accessing urgent and emergency care have risen year on year. Though there is little detailed analysis of what has caused these rise, the report cites an increased elderly population with complex health needs, difficulty accessing out of hours GPs, and the government raising expectations of the system by promoting a market style consumer ethos towards the NHS.

The agreement between Iran and western governments, on Iran freezing its nuclear programme, in return for some relief from economic sanctions, is a good thing.

The Geneva deal eases political tensions and reduces the possibility of military action against Iran. Political friction may still ratchet up if either side fails to deliver, if further investigation of Iranian nuclear capability shows military development, or if Israel kicks up enough fuss to undermine the agreement.