Monthly Archives: March 2007
OVER ten thousand nurses have bombarded MPs with letters protesting at this year’s pay cut for nurses and other health care workers. It comes as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) unveils details of its consultation with members to gauge their views on this year’s below inflation pay award. The...
THE whole world can now contrast, at its leisure, the treatment of Iraqi prisoners held by the US at Abu Ghraib with that of the 15 British naval prisoners of the Iranian revolutionary guards, as advised by one of the prisoners, Leading Seaman Turney. In fact, the comparison can be...
Approximately 20,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) working for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Identity and Passports Service (IPS) are taking part in a one day national strike today over the imposition of a below inflation pay rise. As part of the next steps of...
YESTERDAY, Prime Minister Blair made a written statement to the House of Commons announcing that the Home Office is to be split in two. There will be a Ministry of Justice taking over responsibility for criminal law and administration of the prisons while the Home Office will be concentrating on...
COLONEL GADAFFI has given some of his reasons for refusing to attend the summit of Arab leaders at Riyadh. He said that he decided not to participate for two reasons. The first was the failure by Arab leaders and the Arab League to take a serious stand on the confrontation between...
IN the face of the rising anger of junior doctors, nurses, consultants, ancillary workers and patients over the Labour government’s policy of deliberately crashing the NHS, and bankrupting NHS Trusts, the government and the Department of Health have been forced to make a retreat. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt introduced a...
THE proposed site of a new City Academy, next to the new Wembley Stadium, is being occupied to stop the privatisation project from going ahead. School students and teachers came to show their support for the action during their lunchbreak on Tuesday afternoon, as the local community vowed to continue...
HEALTH unions yesterday welcomed a forced government retreat on the notorious ‘double whammy’ NHS accounting system whereby trusts have their funding cut twice if they get into deficit. Responding to a parliamentary written statement by health secretary Hewitt yesterday morning, James Johnson, chairman of the British Medical Association said: ‘This...
THE state-owned Nanjing Automobile company, which bought MG Rover for a knock down price of £53 million and then transferred and reassembled 10,000 tonnes of plant in a custom-built factory in Nanjing, China, yesterday began production of MGs in China. The two models that are to be produced are the...
The outgoing US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has admitted for first time to holding talks with insurgent leaders. Meanwhile bomb attacks killed five US soldiers in Iraq, the US military said on Monday amid reports that the outgoing US ambassador held talks last year with rebel groups in...
THE Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas and the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice held a joint press conference in Ramallah last Sunday in the presidential compound. The press conference was held in the context of the failed US sponsored Israeli attack on the Lebanon to try to destroy Hezbollah,...
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams yesterday agreed a May 8th date for the return of devolved local government in the north of Ireland, after his first ever one to one political meeting with DUP leader Ian Paisley. Adams and Paisley sat next to each other at a press conference following...
‘IT simply is not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters and I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us,’ Prime Minister Blair said yesterday from the EU celebrations in Berlin. Blair was speaking after last Friday’s seizure of 15 British sailors and...
A HAMAS leader Khalil Abu-Layla said on Saturday that the Palestinians are not pinning any hopes on a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Palestinian territories and Israel. In a televised interview with Ramattan, Abu-Layla said: ‘This visit brings with it some projects through which...
‘THE idea that acute district general hospitals ( DGHs) can be run safely without acute surgical cover, a proper intensive care unit (ITU) and paediatrics, is very dangerous,’ consultant surgeon Anna Athow told News Line yesterday. She added: ‘The DoH is determined to push ahead with the “reconfiguration” of...
LABOUR MP Jack Straw yesterday announced that he is to run Gordon Brown’s campaign for the Labour leadership. Straw’s declaration was answered in the media by articles stating that Prime Minister Blair is continuing to urge Environment Minister Miliband to stand for the Labour leadership against Brown, adding...
Junior doctors have withdrawn from the government established review body set up to try to resolve the failures of the flawed and unfair online specialist training post application system that threatens to leave up to 15,000 doctors without training jobs. The British Medical Association (BMA) Junior doctors Committee...
TWO hundred thousand young people aged between 16 and 18, 11 per cent of that total age group, who are unemployed with no job available for them, are to be subjected to forced labour, under the guise of raising the school leaving age to 18 and giving ...
CHANCELLOR Brown’s budget yesterday outlined savage attacks on the working class, particularly low paid workers. His decision to abolish the 10 pence tax rate for the lowest paid in favour of a 20 pence tax rate for all of the lower paid makes the poor even poorer. As well Brown...
‘OrganiSational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation’ caused the March 23, 2005, explosion at the BP Texas City refinery, the worst industrial accident in the United States since 1990. This is the conclusion of the 335-page final report released on Wednesday by federal investigators from...
‘Increased use of the private sector is skewing staffing levels in the NHS,’ a UNISON spokeswoman told News Line yesterday. She was responding to accusations from MPs on the House of Commons Health Select Committee that there has been a ‘disastrous failure’ of NHS workforce planning creating a...
THE Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) has addressed an open message to the Iraqi people on the fourth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq, which fell last Tuesday, 19 March 2007. The message reads: ‘This is the fourth anniversary of the Anglo-American occupation. ‘Our country is going from bad...
A tense Chancellor Brown yesterday announced a £36bn increase in the sale of public assets (including Student Loans) and a two per cent Corporation Tax cut while raising income tax for the poorest workers. In his Budget speech, Brown left out mention of the rapidly deepening world capitalist crisis,...
BROWN’S ‘big’ budget speech yesterday was an anti-climax, since it was an obvious attempt to ignore the worldwide capitalist economic crisis, and the completely indebted state of the British capitalist economy, in favour of an attempt to sneak into the premiership, unscathed by catastrophe. Brown also pulled back from his...
COUNCIL worker unions angrily rejected a 2 per cent wage cut pay offer yesterday, as inflation hit 4.6 per cent, the highest in 16 years. The Retail Prices Index (RPI), went up to 4.6 per cent, from January’s figure of 4.2 per cent. The RPI, which includes mortgage interest payments,...
LAWYERS have vowed to fight government plans that they warn will destroy the legal aid system. Hundreds of lawyers staged a mass lobby outside the House of Commons despite snow and rain on Monday afternoon, while others went inside to demand their MPs oppose the planned cuts that will...
INFLATION in the UK is accelerating out of control. According to the latest Labour government figures which grossly underestimate the process the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is now at 2.8 per cent and the Retail Price Index (RPI), which includes mortgage interest rates is now at 4.6 per...
PRIME Minister Ismail Haniya’s Palestinian Authority (PA) national unity government, sworn in on Saturday, is being recognised and supported by more and more countries and international institutions. The new government has ministers from the Hamas majority in the Parliament, from Fatah and includes non-party members. Ever since Hamas gained a...
‘I welcome you all on this great day’, said Ismail Haniya last Saturday, just before he was sworn in as Prime Minister of the new Palestinian National Unity Government. In a special address to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Haniya formally asked for a vote of confidence, and proceeded to lay...
Health and education unions yesterday responded angrily to Prime Minister Blair’s policy review that signals a stepping up of Blair and Brown’s privatisation drive under the guise of the ‘personalisation of public services’. Blair and Chancellor Brown launched their public services policy review at a City Academy in Hackney, where...
ONLY those with short memories, or strong stomachs, did not have to stop themselves vomiting when hearing Tory leader David Cameron talk about his support for the National Health Service at the weekend. The Conservative Party leader parachuted himself onto the platform at Saturday’s rally of 12,000 junior doctors demonstrating...
Over 12,000 junior doctors and supporters, including medical students, registrars and a number of consultants, marched through central London last Saturday against government ‘reforms’ which will see up to 15,000 junior doctors without a training post. Hndreds of doctors also marched in Glasgow where BMA Scotland junior doctors committee vice-chairman...
The Howard League for Penal Reform has today condemned the changes to legal aid provision that will come into effect from April 1st 2007 as a threat to assisting vulnerable children. The government intends to stop paying legal aid providers by the hour, instead offering them a fixed...
AROUND 15,000 junior doctors are about to find themselves without training posts if Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and the new Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) are allowed to continue. A grass-roots junior doctors’ organisation called Remedy began campaigning against MTAS and are organising today’s march. MMC proposes markedly shorter times for...
Trade union leaders in Europe have warned that the present ‘spectacular growth’ of the private equity venture capitalist deals is ‘unsustainable’ and ‘stoking up a speculative bubble’ that will burst. The odium in which these capitalist raiding groups are now held has led to union leaders scrambling to take up...
AT the heart of the Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) programmes for junior doctors is the Blair government’s all out assault on the NHS. These programmes are about: 1. The removal of hospital doctors and reduction of training places. 2. The shortening in training...
NINETY Five Labour MPs voted against the government’s renewal of the Trident programme in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening as the Labour Party in parliament split. The Blair-Brown faction won the day with the support of the Tory Party. Its leader Cameron showed a new found arrogance in...
Palestinian leaders unveiled a new unity government yesterday that they hope will stop months of deadly factional violence and end a crippling international aid boycott. The new coalition unites the Hamas movement with president Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party and was formed after weeks of wrangling over the line-up. Prime minister-designate Ismail...
PROSPECT members in the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency have warned that safety on the UK’s road network is at risk if plans to privatise some of the agency’s core frontline functions are pushed through. Key safety functions under threat include: lorry and bus testing; training services; operator licensing...
NEARLY 1,000 US Fire Fighters (IAFF) are set to take part in today’s 2008 presidential campaign’s first bipartisan candidate forum on Wednesday in Washington, DC. The six Democratic and four Republican White House hopefuls set to appear, will each have 15 minutes to lay out their case and try...
ONCE again yesterday morning, Campsfield detention camp was on fire, with coachloads of prison officers, the ‘tornado team’ armed with riot shields, arriving and entering the camp to restore order among the asylum seekers who are being held there. Seven staff and two inmates were injured in the fire...
‘This will probably happen in other detention centres, the only time people listen is when there is a revolt,’ Bill MacKeith of Close Campsfield Campaign told News Line yesterday. He was speaking after serious disturbances and a subsequent fire at the privately-run immigration removal centre left at least two inmates...