Steve Bell's Guardian cartoon on the party leaders' TV election debate row that flared up in the New Year was typically pointed. It depicted the four austerity party leaders in a line - Cameron, Farage, Clegg and Miliband - with the Greens, in a dig at Cameron's previous 'cut the green crap' comments, an unpleasant presence for them all (see gu.com/p/44q9f/tw).

See more details about the conference here

Over 40 people crammed into TUSC's North West regional conference on Saturday 22 November, to map out plans for TUSC over the next year.

Trade unionists, students, community campaigners, socialists and activists from across the region contributed to the discussions.

The former Liverpool Labour city councillor Tony Mulhearn, recently selected to fight Liverpool Riverside at the general election for TUSC, introduced the first discussion. "A madness is infecting politics", said Tony, in the vacuum created by no mass voice for working-class people, and expressed in the rise of UKIP, the return of fraudster minister Laws to political prominence, while unions like the PCS face a massive assault on their basic right to organise.

Join the one thousand and one hundred campaign! To become a TUSC candidate go to the Candidates page on our website at http://www.tusc.org.uk/candidate

The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) steering committee is meeting in early December to get down to details on plans for the 2015 Westminster elections. This follows a successful 70-strong conference in November of Scottish TUSC to discuss the way forward following the independence referendum.

Despite the huge working class vote in the referendum for Yes, which was a revolt against austerity and the political establishment, the cuts juggernaut has continued. That's why the conference voted unanimously to stand candidates in the 2015 Westminster elections on an uncompromising anti-cuts platform

In the days running up to the conference a series of shocking reports emerged about the scale of the planned cuts to public services in Scotland.

On the last weekend in October around 60 people gathered to participate in Leicester's first ever People's Budget conference.

The event was organised by Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts - Barbara Potter and Wayne Naylor - alongside TUSC. The two councillors left Labour this year to join TUSC's alliance of trade union and anti-cuts groups.

As Barbara told the conference, "Leaving the Labour Party was a big thing. All my family have always voted Labour. They're no longer the party who stick up for ordinary people. We all need to stick together - the People's Budget marks an opportunity to create something new".

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee, meeting this week, has approved the first eight parliamentary candidates for next May's general election.

At the same time, as part of building support for standing a TUSC candidate, more TUSC groups are organising open letters and delegations to challenge their local Labour Party parliamentary candidate on where they stand on key issues, before a decision is made on whether the seat will be part of the TUSC 2015 election campaign.

The first TUSC parliamentary candidates approved include the former Labour MP and TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist, who will stand in the Coventry North West constituency presently held by Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, a multi-millionaire former businessman and one of the wealthiest MPs in the current parliament.

Hundreds of low paid Barking and Dagenham council workers facing a £2,000 cut to their annual income protested outside Barking town hall on Tuesday 7 October, reports Pete Mason, who stood as a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) local election candidate in the borough back in May.

Joining them were a number of Labour councillors who face suspension from the Labour whip and potential expulsion from the Labour Group if they carry through their declared intention to vote against the proposed cuts at the 1st December full council meeting. Labour took all 51 seats on Barking and Dagenham council (in east London) in May's election.

Refuse collectors parked their dustbin lorries in a long line outside the town hall and hooted their horns. The GMB and Unite members and the protesting councillors then marched into the public gallery, where deputy leader of the council, Dominic Twomey, told the cabinet meeting that the council needs to cut £53 million during the next three years. Some council workers fear losing their homes if their income is cut by £2,000, GMB activists say. The borough already has the highest level of repossessions in London. Further cuts proposed include closing care and homeless centres.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee, meeting last week, has set an ambitious target for next year's elections - to have a TUSC candidate in one thousand local council wards and one hundred parliamentary constituencies on May 7th 2015.

One thing is clear about the outcome of the 2015 general election. Whichever establishment party or combination of parties wins, they will continue with policies favouring the rich and austerity for the rest of us.

That's why TUSC was set up in 2010, co-founded by the late Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT transport workers' union. Its purpose is to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to come together on a common platform to challenge the pro-austerity unity of the establishment parties at the ballot box.

Thanks are due to Ian Martin, one of the writers of the savage political satire The Thick of It, for his recent article in the Guardian from this year's Labour Party conference (see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/23/ian-martin-labour-conference-thick-of-it ).

Firstly because he uses his piece to explain once again - if not exactly in Malcolm Tucker terms but near enough - just how spineless the alleged 'official opposition' to the Con-Dems have become. But also, in pondering what possible alternatives there might be, for name-checking TUSC and one of our co-founders, in Ian's words, "the late great Bob Crow".

TUSC chair Dave Nellist sent in a letter to the Guardian to let its readers know that TUSC is intending to stand even more widely next May - for both the general and the local elections - than we did this year, when we fielded the biggest-ever left-of-Labour working class electoral challenge for 60 years (see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/24/labour-conference-message-offers-left-little-hope ).

A recent article by Guardian journalist Aditya Chakrobortty on the efforts of Enfield council to respond to the housing crisis (see http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/01/enfield-experiment-housing-problem-radical-solution ) vindicates the central point of TUSC's policy platform for local council elections - councillors can find ways to resist austerity if they choose to.

Aditya explains the desperate housing situation developing in the north London borough - although not restricted to there! - against the backdrop of an historic underbuild of social housing, the Con-Dems' benefit cuts, and rising private sector rents.

He shows that councils still have powers they could use, if the will is there, to intervene. Enfield, he reports, "has arranged a credit facility of £100m" to bulk-buy homes, in a programme began in March this year. It is introducing a scheme to license private landlords and, "for the first time in 30 years, it is building council homes", with 180 starts this month as the first steps.