Inside this issue...
• Despite high unemployment on Merseyside, building workers are being bussed in from outside the area. The aim is to replace unionised labour with "lump" workers who are technically self-employed and have fewer rights (page 1).
• Also on page 1 is a developing story about excessive charges at Liverpool's only abortion clinic, Lynwood Nursing Home, which has been set up as a profit-making enterprise. There are clinics in other parts of the country which are run by charities and charge much lower fees.
• On pages 6 and 7 the Free Press investigates pollution of the River Mersey, Liverpool Bay and the Irish Sea caused by the dumping of sewage and chemical waste.
• Slum landlord Realmdeal is back in the news again, with a new name: Standfield Properties. The Free Press suggest this is a move to shak off its reputation "for alarming old people, exploiting loopholes in the Rent Act and offering badly-converted flat-lets, money and gifts to get people to move out of their homes" (page 5).
• Liverpool has the highest proportion of psychiatric in-patients in the country. It is also one of the few areas where most patients entering psychiatric hospitals are not going there for the first time — which often the result of inadequate support services once they are discharged (page 6).
• The bottom section of page 4 originally contained the latest extract from
The Little Red Schoolbook, which was about sex. The printer objected and refused to print it, so the extract was removed and hastily replaced with fillers. A note on the page explains what happened and says the extract is being made available separately, as a leaflet.
• An article on page 3 questions the legality of fees that several flat agencies in Liverpool are demanding from their clients.
• "Horse Sense" (page 5) is the first in a series of columns on horse race betting. Its author is George Maher, husband of Chrissie Maher one of the founders of the Tuebrook Bugle.
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