Monthly Archives: November 2006
NOT content with wrecking Iraq, the US administration is moving in to wreck the British NHS on behalf of the US drug companies. The US deputy health secretary Azar was in town on Sunday to continue his discussions with Health Secretary Hewitt – who is on record as...
THE first day of the Employment Tribunal for Gate Gourmet sacked workers took place yesterday in Reading, where they are challenging the company over wrongful dismissal. Yesterday the pre-hearing of the Tribunal began to discuss whether a strike or any other industrial action had taken place on August 10th 2005...
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya last Saturday pledged to expose the full extent of last week’s Israeli massacre at Beit Hanoun of 19 mainly women and children, he then went on to review progress on a Palestinian government of national unity. He said: ‘We will work on bringing judges and...
THE killing of four British soldiers in Basra on Sunday with at least three seriously injured, and the killing of six US soldiers in the same period in northern Iraq, has underlined the fact that in Iraq the game is up for Bush and Blair. What they require now, after...
Health campaigners, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) yesterday accused the government of wasting millions of pounds of NHS money on financial ‘hit squads’. One in four NHS Trusts has had high-flying financial management consultants sent in by the government to ‘tackle’ deficits. The number...
Donald Rumsfeld, who was forced to resign as US defence secretary last Wednesday, may face criminal charges in Germany for alleged abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) announced on Friday: ‘On November 14, 2006, the CCR will file a criminal complaint against former...
JUST days after the mid-term elections dealt a decisive blow to his administration, Bush with the support of the Democrats has seen to it that his ambassador to the UN, Bolton, has vetoed a Security Council draft motion condemning the Israeli massacre of 19 mainly women and children in...
FIANNA Fail has betrayed its working class supporters and Irish Government aviation policy is a complete disaster‚ said TEEU (Technical, Engineering and Electrical Trade Union) Regional Secretary Arthur Hall. The TEEU Eastern Regional Secretary told the union’s biennial conference in Dundalk yesterday that Fianna Fail has betrayed the trust of...
The Arab League has criticised the United States for vetoing a UN Security Council resolution that sought to condemn Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip. The US used its veto to halt the draft resolution, sponsored by the Gulf state of Qatar, that criticised the Israeli tank shelling of homes in Beit...
‘SAY “No’’ to this sham consultation!’, shouted dozens of angry local residents fighting to save Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, as they demonstrated outside the Novotel in Euston yesterday morning. A leaflet handed out by local residents stated: ‘Despite clear public opposition to the closure of A&E, Maternity and Children’s...
WITH the police closing in to interview him under caution about the cash for peerages scandal, and after his government has been stunned by the blow delivered to President Bush in the mid-term Congressional elections, Blair is now facing a disintegrating regime at home. He has already lost key supporters...
US TRADE union leaders’ were yesterday demanding that the Democrats take action on workers’ issues in the Houses of Congress, in return for the country’s trade unionists delivering the decisive anti-Bush votes in the mid term elections. Teamsters leader James P Hoffa declared that now it is ‘the time for...
‘YOU do not want peace at all. You have destroyed all chances of peace and you should bear all the responsibility,’ Palestinian President Abbas declared yesterday about the Israeli enemy. At the same time the Palestinian Premier Haniya declared that Hamas will seek revenge for the massacres of the Palestinian...
THE commander of Iran’s Revolution Guards, Brig-Gen Rahim-Safavi, has told Iranian TV that Tehran now possesses modern missile systems, and that Iran is ready to give its missile systems, including the Shahab series, to its allies. Speaking in an interview with Al-Alam TV, Safavi said that the Iranian forces also...
STRIKING JJB Sports warehouse staff from Wigan went to London yesterday, to demand the government takes action to uphold the law against strike-breaking by agency workers. Their union, the GMB, quoted the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations 2003, which came into force in April 2004. Strikers taking part...
‘The consultation process has been an absolute sham’, said Save Chase Farm councillor Kieran McGregor ahead of this morning’s lobby of the NHS Independent Reconfiguration Panel at the Novotel in Euston, central London. Enfield councillor McGregor added: ‘We want to know on what basis ten options became four without the...
NHS Logistics was taken over by DHL on 1 October – the Blair/Brown government’s first privatisation of an NHS department so far. The supplier of over 43,000 lines of products, including syringes, bandages, medical equipment and food to NHS facilities nationally, NHS Logistics now also supplies profits to the German...
WHAT is being called in the US a ‘voter uprising’ has driven Bush’s Republicans out of their control of the House of Representatives, and is threatening to do the same in the Senate, with recounts in Montana and Virginia ongoing. This mid-term result is also a body blow to Bush’s...
REFUSED asylum-seekers are eating out of bins and sleeping in parks, public toilets and phone-boxes because of government policy New reports show government policy is forcing refused asylum-seekers into abject poverty. This was the message yesterday from both Amnesty International UK and Refugee Action as they published a new...
WITH business sure that the Bank of England is due to raise interest rates to at least five per cent, warnings are being made about the prospect of a rapid increase in unemployment, in bankruptcies, even now at record figures, and in the number of people who are unable...
Last Thursday, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, launched a public debate on ‘the implications of living in a surveillance society’. The Information Commissioner’s Office hosted the 28th International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners’ Conference in London. Opening the conference, Thomas warned that we are waking up to a surveillance society. A...
PRIME Minister Blair yesterday urged support for ID cards, and a national database on everyone, for ‘less than £30’ above the cost of new ‘biometric’ passports. This was before he was asked at his weekly Downing St press conference if he was then saying that he wants fingerprint and eye...
BLAIR yesterday announced the latest line of government spin – that compulsory ID cards, state-run mass fingerprinting and DNA bases, along with no-jury trials and detention without trial, are not about a loss of basic rights. In fact they are all aspects of ‘modernity’. In other words all these developments...
THE Hamas Palestinian government has condemned the death sentence handed down to Saddam Hussein, recalling the help the Iraqi leader gave to the Palestinian people. ‘We as the Palestinian people support whoever supports our people and president Saddam Hussein was one of those,’ Fawzi Barhum, a Hamas...
‘VICTORY is close now,’ locked-out Gate Gourmet worker Parmjit Bains told a meeting of more than 200 trade unionists and youth on Sunday in Southall. The meeting was called to support the 15-month-long struggle of the Gate Gourmet workers, sacked by megaphone in August 2005. The meeting, on the eve of...
THE court that convicted President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to be hung for crimes against humanity was a creation of imperialism, made up of a gang of puppets specially trained in London to do the job for the US and the UK, under statutes and provisions worked out by...
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya last Friday evening condemned the Israeli Army for firing into a crowd and killing two Palestinian women during a siege in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza earlier in the day. He said the event was part of a ‘planned annihilation’ of the Palestinians. He called on UN...
‘Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Death to the occupiers! Death to Israel! Death to the traitors!’ shouted a defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday as he was sentenced to death. The puppet court found Saddam guilty over the deaths that took place in the village of...
OH how the mighty have fallen. It was not so long ago that Blairites were queuing up to challenge Gordon Brown for the premiership. To name but a few, there was Reid, Clarke, Johnson – even Hazel Blears. Yesterday, however, ex-radical anti-apartheid campaigner, Peter Hain, was predicting that...
GATE Gourmet locked-out workers are inviting all trade unionists and their families and friends to come to their rally in Southall Community Centre, Merrick Road at 2pm this Sunday. The Transport and General Workers Union members, who have been locked out from their jobs at Heathrow Airport since August last...
The British Air Line Pilots Association (Balpa) warned yesterday that there is an increasing likelihood of a strike ballot over British Airways’ proposed changes to employees’ pensions, as relations with the company deteriorate. Speaking after the latest talks over BA’s plans to resolve the £2.1bn pensions fund deficit ended without...
‘We have to take action at Whipps Cross Hospital against cuts and closure,’ consultant surgeon Mrs Anna Athow told a packed public meeting in Walthamstow, northeast London on Thursday night. Speaking to applause from the floor of the Keep Our NHS Public over 400-strong gathering, Mrs Athow called for national...
YESTERDAY the Labour government was carrying on with its campaign to demonise the country’s youth, reaching truly laughable levels of trivial pursuit. Its supporter, the Institute for Public Policy Research, set out to prove that Britain’s youth are the worst behaved in Europe. It found that on every indicator of...
MANY thousands of NHS staff, from cleaners to doctors, from all over the country, were joined by members of the public fighting hospital closures in a mass lobby of parliament on Wednesday. The November 1 action was the first action called by NHS Together – the coalition of TUC...
The family of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday expressed ‘shock and disbelief at the news that officers involved in the killing of Jean Charles have killed again’. They were speaking after police officers killed a man allegedly involved in a criminal act in Kent on Tuesday. A Metropolitan Police statement confirmed:...
YESTERDAY thousands of NHS workers took part in the ‘NHS Together’ Lobby of Parliament to demand an end to NHS privatisation. The lobbying workers were very angry and came from every section of the NHS where sackings, cuts, closures and privatising measures are the rule. They had not the...
‘BLOOD on your hands!’, ‘Shame on you!’ shouted demonstrators opposite parliament on Tuesday night, as MPs left the House of Commons after a debate on the government’s conduct leading up to the invasion of Iraq and in the aftermath. The demonstrators were angry that the government had narrowly survived a...
‘Lebanon is implementing (UN) Resolution 1701 while Israel is dragging its feet and is showing intransigence’, Lebanese Prime Minister Fu’ad al-Siniora told a joint press conference last Saturday after a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Siniora started the conference by saying: ‘I welcome my friend Javier Solana...
ON WEDNESDAY Sir Nicholas Stern presented his Review of the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by Chancellor Gordon Brown. Stern is the Chief Economist at the Treasury and a former Chief Economist at the World Bank. Immediately, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brown, the Tory leader David Cameron and Sir Menzies...
NO TO PRIVATISATION! SAVE OUR DISTRICT GENERAL HOSPITALS! BLAIR AND BROWN OUT! THE Blair government is gunning for District General Hospitals – David Nicholson, the Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS), has said that 60 hospitals must be ‘reconfigured’, that is down-sized to non-acute facilities, or closed. This comes after a...