Monthly Archives: March 2007
THE TENS of billions of pounds the government intends to spend on new weapons of mass destruction should be spent on public services, said the RMT transport workers’ union yesterday. The union made its call on the eve of today’s House of Commons vote on Trident replacement, which the Blair...
ON MONDAY trading on the Wall Street stock market in New Century Financial shares was halted, as the second largest US sub-prime mortgage lender was suspended, staggering on the edge of bankruptcy. At least 22 other sub-prime lenders have already gone bust. New Century Financial has said that its bankers...
HASSAN NASRALLAH the Hezbollah leader made an important statement over Hezbollah TV last Friday. He said: ‘In our region we witness a big and serious challenge represented recently by the direct military and intelligence presence of the US Administration to achieve its scheme for the control of our resources, countries,...
AS a result of Tory and Labour health reforms designed to break up the NHS, we now have thousands of unemployed nurse graduates and junior doctors. We are also being told by Labour that there are just too many hospitals and that everybody will be better off when they...
PRIVATE equity raider, the Texas Pacific Group has sold airline catering company Gate Gourmet to bankers Merrill Lynch. Gate Gourmet, which is based in the United States and Switzerland, has been wracked by a financial crisis and industrial action since Texas Pacific bought it from Swissair Group in 2002 for...
Over 30,000 Greek students and lecturers demonstrating against the government’s Education Bill were viciously attacked by the armed riot police outside the Vouli (Greek parliament) on Thursday night in Athens. Street battles followed throughout the city centre with riot police making use of huge amounts of tear gas; some gas...
Zimbabwean riot police arrested opposition leader Morgan Tzvangirai when they prevented a mass anti-government protest yesterday. Police rounded up dozens of opposition activists and trade union leaders. At least four MPs from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is based on the trade unions, were among those held by...
LARGE numbers of Labour MPs are opposed to Blair’s programme to renew the Trident submarine based, nuclear weapons delivery system. The eventual cost of this renewal will be in the region of £80 billion – a sum big enough to resolve many of the problems that working people...
private equity firm 3i on Thursday listed its 3i Infrastructure fund on the London stock market only to see it sink to the bottom of its range bringing in £700 million, £600 million short of the £1.3 billion target. The largest investor in 3i Infrastructure is 3i itself, with a...
‘DESPITE five days of strike action by 55 members of the GMB, NCP, owned by private equity group 3i, is refusing to recognise the union,’ GMB Regional Organiser Rob Kelsall said on a picket of London’s Dorchester Hotel yesterday. Pickets handed out leaflets to passers-by and those attending the British...
Thousands have been displaced in a fresh Sri Lankan offensive, reported the Tamilnet website on Thursday. The head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) political wing, SP Thamilselvan, told the Tamilnet website that the army had amassed military hardware in preparation for a major offensive towards the Mullaitivu...
WEDNESDAY’S vote in the House of Commons when there was a 113 majority for the replacement of the House of Lords by an elected assembly was both unexpected, and unwanted by the leaders of the Labour and Tory parties. For some time the unelected Lords, a relic of feudal society,...
THE Islamic Jihad Movement last Monday called for isolating the Israeli occupation government and trying its leaders for ‘crimes against humanity,’ especially by pursuing a policy of medical negligence towards prisoners in its jails. In a statement the movement expressed its deep concern about what it described as medical...
For the first time an alliance of General Secretaries of trade unions has come together in support of Alphonsus Uche Okafor-Mefor, a Nigerian refugee in detention and under threat of deportation. This is unprecedented, said campaigners yesterday. The General Secretaries are: Paul Mackney of UCU (the University and Colleges Union), Mark...
YESTERDAY Home Secretary John Reid showed that patriotism is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel when he attacked foreigners for ‘stealing our benefits’. He also accused them of undermining the minimum wage, and stealing free NHS treatment. He only had to extend the list to include ‘stealing our...
THE AFL-CIO US trade union federation has condemned President Bush for his lack of any action in support of the victims of the recent tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia. Its statement said: ‘In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the heroine Blanche DuBois says: “Whoever you are, I have always...
Hospital consultants in the West Midlands are boycotting the new ‘reformed’ system for selecting junior doctors for specialist training. The consultants said they would not interview any candidates, and that the system is flawed and unfair. The British Medical Association has already called on the government to suspend the...
THE Azeri newspaper Zarkalo has been discussing what role Azerbaijan should take if the US launches an attack on Iran. Its conclusion is that Azerbaijan will need security guarantees from the USA if the latter decides to punish Iran for ignoring warnings about its nuclear programme by taking...
the disastrous introduction of a ‘fatally flawed’ new recruitment system for junior doctors could haunt the NHS for years to come, the BMA has warned. Dr Jo Hilborne, chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors’ Committee, and Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA Consultants’ Committee, wrote to Health Secretary Patricia...
Cuts and lack of training led to the deaths of two firefighters in Hertfordshire, the Fire Brigades Union says in its comment following the completion last week of the inquest into the fatalities at Harrow Court, Stevenage. Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said: ‘We have heard of the extraordinary...
Welfare ‘reform’ plans aimed at privatising ‘help’ for the long term unemployed drew an angry response from civil servants’ union PCS yesterday. Union leader Mark Serwotka branded it a ‘slap in the face for the tens of thousands of hardworking Jobcentre staff who have delivered the New Deal and the lowest...
BOTH Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Brown insisted yesterday, in support of Works and Pensions minister Hutton, that single parents must look for work once their child reaches 12. They added that unless the age for this was reduced from the current 16 years, British capitalism could no longer afford...
Prime Minister Blair and Gordon Brown, together with Work and Pensions Secretary Hutton, will today announce a new, savage attack on lone parents and disabled people. Using the review of the New Deal workfare system they commissioned from City banker David Freud, the three ministers will announce that single parents...
‘WE are going to fight to keep our hospitals, even if it means occupying them to keep them open,’ shouted demonstrators fighting plans to close Maudsley Hospital Emergency Clinic and Felix Post Day Centre in south London on Saturday. Five hundred marchers went from Camberwell Green to Maudsley psychiatric hospital,...
THE working class is rising up to defend the Welfare State. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of workers and members of the public took to the streets in towns and cities all over Britain after NHS Together was at last forced to call a day of action. Last week in...
‘There will be no more NHS Logistics,’ UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis assured News Line yesterday. He was referring to the way the unions allowed the sell-off of the NHS supplies organisation to parcels company DHL. He added: ‘We will use every means at our disposal to prevent our health services...
THE crisis of the NHS has reached the point of its transformation. Because of the fake NHS pricing mechanisms imposed by Labour, NHS hospitals are being bankrupted, and readied to be cut, losing their maternity facilities and/or A&Es, or being completely closed. Health Minister Hewitt has already issued a handbook of...
IMPOSSIBLE fees estimated at £1,500 a year will be imposed in September, if the government is allowed to go ahead with planned cuts in funding for English language courses, which are currently free. People seeking asylum in Britain – who have been denied the right to work or to claim...
‘THE mass picket has gone very well,’ said Bill Rogers, secretary of the North East London Council of Action, outside the North Middlesex Hospital yesterday. ‘We have signed up 40 people to join the Council of Action who agree with us that strike action and occupations are necessary...
STRIKES and protest marches are taking place at Airbus plants in France and Germany for a third day after it was announced that over 10,000 workers will be sacked. On Thursday there were wildcat strikes at Nordenham and at plants all over France, while up to 2,000 workers stopped work...
A NINE per cent fall on the small Chinese stock market, after rumours that the Stalinist bureaucracy was about to tax shares, and slightly curb business, led on Tuesday to a 149 point fall in the FTSE 100 index, lopping some £30 billion off of British share prices,...
Public sector union, UNISON, yesterday published a new report showing that each of the 21 elected cabinet ministers in the government faces severe health cuts in or affecting their own backyard. UNISON Head of Health Karen Jennings warned: ‘If ministers don’t begin to start backing their local health services,...
SRI LANKA is undergoing a turbulent period, with the introduction of an executive presidential system, along with an open economic policy (Laissez Faire) exposing the country to an arrogant administration, foreign investment and exploitation. Asian countries are noted for nepotism and Sri Lanka is not immune to that. As a result,...