Monthly Archives: June 2005
THE GMB Annual Congress has condemned the decision of the Labour government to privatise the council house stock in Prime Minister Blair’s own constituency, Sedgefield. The union pledged to campaign with local groups to stop the privatisation of the council housing stock. The union commented that ‘Similar housing plans sell-offs by...
‘Iraqi people do not want a foreign occupation of their country,’ Paula Kennedy, Equal Opportunities Commission, Manchester Branch, told the conference of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) in Brighton yesterday. Kennedy was moving motion A128, which was carried by a clear majority, which said the trade union movement...
ALISTAIR Darling, the Labour government transport minister, yesterday unveiled the government’s plan to drive millions of working class drivers off the roads with a new road tax, payable by the mile travelled. At the same time, there is to be a satellite-linked spy in every lorry, van and car, recording...
THE Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) voted unanimously yesterday to pursue its ‘ongoing trade dispute’ with the government, including taking ‘industrial action’. Moving the successful Motion A1 at the PCS’s Annual Delegate Conference in Brighton, Hugh Lalley, from the National Executive Committee (NEC) said it was a year since...
YESTERDAY Paul Miller, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) Consultants Committee launched an unprecedented attack on the government over the introduction of private treatment centres. Addressing this year’s BMA consultants’ conference, Miller said: ‘For over two-and-a-half years I and others in the BMA have been analysing the interactions of...
EVEN the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles has condemned the issuing of control orders by the British Home Secretary as a breach of European law, and human rights. The new powers mean the Home Secretary can force a person to stay inside their home indefinitely if...
Latin America has 240 million people living in poverty, 100 million of them in extreme poverty, said Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque in an address to the 35th General Assembly of the OAS (Organisation of American States). Rodriguez spoke, along with several Foreign Ministers of other countries in the...
Yesterday tens of thousands of bank workers were on strike throughout Greece for the second day of a two-day strike called by their union OTOE in defence of pensions. Over 1,000 strikers staged a militant rally and march yesterday in Athens city centre proclaiming their determination to defend their pensions...
SHOP sales in May were only 1.4 per cent up on the same month in 2005. Comparing the same products and shops, sales were actually down by 2.4 per cent on a year ago, according to figures published by the British Retail Consortium (BRT) yesterday. This prompted BRT Director Kevin...
Targets set by ministers for agencies trying to get Scotland’s long-term unemployed off benefits are making the problem worse, not better. That is the finding of a highly-critical report, carried out on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by the Training and Employment Research Unit at Glasgow University. The report’s authors...
BEFORE our eyes, the Live Aid movement has been transformed into a Live 8 movement, whose purpose has become to support the British Prime Minister Blair and his Chancellor Brown at the Group of Eight meeting of the seven biggest capitalist powers, plus Russia. Brown and Blair are the ‘good...
Lebanese national resistance movement Hezbollah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah has warned that the United States will drive Lebanon towards sedition if Lebanon does not conform with the US agenda. Nasrallah said last Friday Lebanon’s main aim after the elections is achieving true sovereignty, freedom and independence. He said those who plant bombs...
‘A Rochdale head teacher, Jed Morgan, and the families of refugee children, travelled to London yesterday in a bid to stop the deportation of seven of his school’s pupils. Immigration minister Tony McNulty had agreed to meet Morgan and the children’s families to discuss their case. St John’s Primary School says...
THE US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defended, at an Asia-Pacific conference of regional defence ministers and military chiefs, the US drive to develop nuclear ‘bunker busting’ bombs. He rejected charges that the US was practicing ‘hypocrisy’, because at the same time as it is going all out to develop...
‘If the job cuts are still on, the strikes will be reinstated,’ BECTU assistant general secretary Gerry Morrissey told News Line yesterday. Speaking after the debate on the planned BBC cuts programme involving 4,000 sackings, at the BECTU annual conference in Liverpool, Morrissey confirmed BECTU was standing by the joint...
Alun Pugh, Minister for Culture, the Welsh Language and Sport, last Friday faced tough questions about the future of BBC Wales and stated that ‘clearly no-one wants to see job losses in broadcasting in Wales’. During a debate in the National Assembly for Wales, Owen John Thomas was among several...
THE uncovering of ‘new’ forensic evidence by the Surrey constabulary has led to the arrest of the two police officers who shot dead Harry Stanley, on September 22 1999, as he was making his way home. The two have been arrested on suspicion of murder, suspicion of gross negligence, manslaughter...
The Blair government is trawling Europe for health privateers to carry out elective operations in the NHS, the British Medical Association yesterday revealed in its house magazine BMA News. ‘Independent’ sector firms from across Europe are being invited to bid for surgical contracts worth a total of £500m a year...
The mastermind of Israel’s policy of aerial extra-judicial execution of Palestinian resistance fighters, Dan Halutz on Wednesday officially replaced Moshe Ya’alon as Chief of Staff of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), reported the Palestine Media Centre on Wednesday. Halutz, 57, was promoted to lieutenant general at a gala ceremony in...
THE 61 per cent ‘no’ vote in Holland, on a 62 per cent electoral turnout, against the EU constitution was no surprise after the French events, and suggests that if states such as Germany and Italy, where there is intense anti-EU feeling, had held referenda, the ‘no’ vote would...
Human rights organisation Amnesty International has hit back at US president George W Bush’s criticism of its annual report which said the USA was practising and encouraging torture. Bush said Tuesday that the Amnesty allegations were ‘absurd’ and came from ‘people who hate America’. ‘President Bush again failed to address longstanding...
Greek Telecom’s OME-OTE trade union leadership succeeded last weekend in pushing through the union’s congress a most reactionary agreement which had been worked out in secret talks with management and government ministers. The deal allows Greek Telecom to offer “early retirement” bonus with government funds to some 6,000 employees of...
THE imperialists and their Chinese and Russian stooges on the UN Security Council have extended the mandate of the US-led occupation armies in Iraq, after a plea from the Iraqi puppet Foreign Minister, Zebari. He said that the regime established by the US-organised January 30th ‘general elections’ would be unable...