Monthly Archives: October 2007
THE overstretched and undervalued NHS workforce will not accept another below-inflation pay deal next year, trade unions representing over 1.1 million staff said yesterday. UNISON Head of Health Karen Jennings told a press conference at UNISON headquarters in London: ‘We’re calling for a substantial, above inflation pay award for 2008-09.’ She...
AT the September Labour Party and TUC conferences the trade union leaders, amongst them the leaders of the UNISON trade union, made out that they were out-and-out opponents of the below-inflation wage rises (wage cuts) that were being forced onto the public sector by the Labour government. However, when it...
‘What angers me is they call this a risk reduction plan, when it is obvious it will cause more risk,’ Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Mid and West Wales membership secretary Lawrence Larmond told News Line yesterday. He said the FBU is ‘deeply disappointed at the downgrading of a fire station’...
THE latest Bank of England figures show that the number of new mortgages being given to house buyers has fallen by 20 per cent in September from a year earlier. Last month, 102,000 new mortgages were approved for house buyers, 25,000 fewer than in September 2006, and 6,000 less...
‘TONY Blair’s responsible for Gordon’s death,’ said Rose Gentle as the inquest opened yesterday into the June 2004 death in Iraq of her son, fusilier Gordon Gentle. Speaking outside Oxford Coroner’s Court, Rose Gentle added that this was because ‘we should never have entered Iraq in the first place’. She continued:...
IN OCTOBER 1917 workers took power in Russia. This is the 90th anniversary of the victorious October Revolution, the first time in history that the working class seized power and held onto it. This began in Petrograd the second city of Russia, that had served as the winter capital of the...
A black tourist has been paid £7,500 for wrongful imprisonment and discrimination in Maghaberry jail, near Belfast. Frank Kakopa who is originally from Zimbabwe was accused of being an illegal immigrant while on holiday in Northern Ireland. The Immigration Service wrongly detained him in Maghaberry jail. Kakopa, a structural engineer who...
THE rotting reality behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spin concerning the ‘reconfiguration’ of British troops in southern Iraq is the complete demoralisation of the British forces who remain there, at Basra Airfield. We have asserted this many time in the past period but yesterday we had this confirmed by...
IRAN has responded with a heroic defiance to the new economic sanctions imposed by the US ruling class that target its military defence, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, and three state-owned banks. The Iranian foreign ministry said the sanctions were doomed to failure, while the military pledged that any attack...
GOVERNMENTS around the world will be watching the House of Lords proceedings on 29-31 October which will determine whether they can rely on United Nations authority or involvement to escape legal liability for human rights abuses during military engagement. The UK government will argue that the...
THE ‘I LOVE THE NHS’ march and rally is attracting widespread celebrity support from the world of music, sport, TV, comedy and literature. The rally in Trafalgar Square on November 3rd is being organised by NHS Together, a unique alliance of 14 health unions and organisations set up...
DOCTORS and other health professionals participated in a conference organised by the British Medical Association in London yesterday to discuss the government’s ‘Healthcare for London – a framework for action’ proposals. These are the proposals by Professor Lord Darzi for the future of London healthcare, which involve breaking up the...
‘IT’S A bad deal. I think it should be thrown out.’ That was the reaction of one delegate, Tam Dewar from Scotland, after a national meeting of area reps and branch secretaries, representing postal workers across Britain, that took place in central London yesterday. The meeting was called to discuss the...
ISRAEL’S defence minister is once again preparing to approve cuts in the supply of electricity and fuel to Gaza, to try once again to starve and freeze the Palestinian people of Gaza into accepting the occupation of Palestine. Ehud Barak, the ex-Israeli premier, met with his officials later on Thursday...
Responding to the latest Push survey of students’ cost of living, Wes Streeting, NUS Vice President (Education), said on Thursday: ‘This survey shows how students from poorer backgrounds may already be “priced out” of attending certain universities. ‘It is no coincidence that the universities with the highest living costs tend...
IN the recent period the government, the Bank of England and the employers have been glorying in the fact that the enlargement of the EU has resulted in well over a million migrants coming legally into Britain. The government and the Bank of England thought that this was wonderful, since...
THE ‘Framework for Action’ plan for London’s healthcare, fronted by Professor Sir Ara Darzi, proposes the destruction of a publicly-provided National Health Service (NHS) in London. It is a blue print for privatising the NHS nationally. Lord Darzi, the National Advisor on Surgery, has been working with the Labour government for...
Claimants are going hungry because of the government’s axing of thousands of civil service jobs, warned the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) yesterday. Further evidence has emerged of the damage being wrought by government job cuts as part of its so called efficiency agenda, the PCS said. It added: ‘In...
POSTAL WORKERS fighting the Crozier/Leighton onslaught on their jobs will treat the ‘Final Agreement’, backed by the CWU executive on Monday by nine votes to five, as a betrayal. The ‘CWU AND ROYAL MAIL PAY AND MODERNISATION AGREEMENT - APRIL 2007/2009’ will now go to a ballot of the 130,000...
PASSING cars tooted their horns, as campaigners shouted ‘No polyclinics – save our hospitals’ outside Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield yesterday. The north-east London Council of Action was holding another successful 50 strong picket of the hospital against plans to close its Accident and Emergency, Maternity and Paediatrics departments. Workers and...
WHILE Olmert and Bush have been, and are, posing as peacemakers with their forthcoming fraud of a peace conference, a most violent and vicious assault is continuing against defenceless Palestinian prisoners at the Kitziot camp in the Negev Desert. A Palestinian detainee was killed and 250 others wounded in clashes...
Hezbollah MP Mustafa Ali al-Husayn last weekend warned that a planned US military base would not be safe as the Lebanon ‘would not allow any occupation of its territories’. Speaking on pro-Hezbollah Al-Manar Television, al-Husayn warned the Lebanese government of prime minister Siniora and the Americans against turning Al-Qulay’at Airport...
THE CWU (Communications Workers Union) yesterday accepted the Royal Mail offer on pay along with plans to modernise the company and reform the pension scheme. This came after the CWU Postal Executive Committee ratified by nine votes to five the deal agreed by the CWU general secretary Billy...
AFTER around eight or so weeks of secret negotiations – on-off-on talks – the CWU postal executive has capitulated to the Hayes Ward leadership, which some time ago capitulated to the demands of the Royal Mail and the Labour government for the imposition of wage cuts, super-flexibility, pension busting...
THE US dollar is reeling against the euro. The US sub-mortgage crisis is deepening, with housing starts down by 10 per cent in September, while profit forecasts for big business are being slashed back. Last Friday night, Wall Street took fright, despite its record-breaking expansion of share prices in recent weeks,...
TURKEY was very close to an invasion of northern Iraq yesterday after a number of Turkish troops were killed and wounded in PKK attacks. Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters (PKK) yesterday claimed to have killed 16 Turkish soldiers and wounded 17 in an ambush in the mountainous southeast of Turkey along...
UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis is urging a big ‘yes’ vote for strike action by its local government worker members in the ballot over pay which closes this Friday. Prentis said: ‘The local government employers have made it very clear that their offer is final. ‘It will not be increased without...
ANGRY residents, health campaigners and NHS trade unionists demonstrated outside Crawley hospital yesterday, next to the shuttle bus that takes patients and workers to and from Redhill hospital. West Sussex Primary Care Trust (PCT) announced on Thursday that they are going ahead with cutting the vital local service by the...
THERE is no deal so reinstate the strikes, frustrated Communication Workers Union (CWU) branch officials said yesterday. This came as yet another day of talks brokered by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber continued at the TUC, after the CWU postal executive again refused to support the deal agreed a week...
KARL MARX wrote in his masterpiece ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ that ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’ Marx was contrasting the tragedy of the swing...
THE BBC backed up by the Brown government is set to ride roughshod over its workforce pushing through 2,700 job cuts, with up to 1,800 compulsory redundancies, and the sell off of the BBC TV Centre. The BBC is to be downsized to make £2 billion in cuts and...
THE Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday that his country is determined to fight against ‘PKK terrorists’ operating out of northern Iraq. He urged the Baghdad government to fulfil its international responsibilities on the fight against terror. Gul said: ‘Iraq should not be allowed to turn into a base for...
French transport unions yesterday extended their nationwide strike for another 24 hours, after bringing the train, bus and metro services to a halt on Thursday. France’s transport system was shut down by the 24-hour strike called in response to the Sarkozy government’s attack on pension rights. The eight unions of the...
BBC journalists, technicians and production staff and electricians will be balloted for strike action if the BBC proceeds to call for ‘voluntary redundancies’ today, BECTU general secretary Gerry Morrissey told News Line yesterday. Speaking after a meeting of the BBC unions representatives yesterday, he added: ‘The decision of all three...
THE Turkish army is poised to invade northern Iraq in order to respond to PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) attacks on its troops, which have recently exacted mounting Turkish casualties, claims the Ankara government. However the alleged cause of war is a veil for the real driving forces of the...
Hundreds of workers took part in the Manufacturing Lobby of Parliament yesterday with Rolls Royce workers marching to the House of Commons chanting ‘Gordon Brown, you let us down!’ There were banners from Rolls Royce in Liverpool and Airbus in Bristol, while other workers wore T-shirts...
Broadcasting and journalism unions BECTU and the NUJ said yesterday they are bracing themselves for the launch of strike action to defend jobs and quality services at the BBC. This is in response to Director General Mark Thompson’s cost-cutting plans put to the BBC Trust yesterday, which include 2,800 job...
Government plans to axe degree funding for certain students contradict its own lifelong learning agenda and will hit universities offering courses to adults and part-time students the hardest, warned the University and College Union (UCU). In September, the government announced that, from 2008, £100m of funding for students who are...
DESPITE having seen Northern Rock share prices crash by 60 per cent, queues of depositors outside branches taking out £2bn of their savings and borrowing £13bn from the Bank of England, Chairman Matt Ridley told MPs yesterday that ‘the Northern Rock business model was a good one’. However, he told...
More than 1,000 Palestinans are stranded on the Egypt-Gaza border waiting to cross home, acording to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Some 87 Palestinians managed to enter Gaza Strip through a hole in the wall separating Gaza from Egypt, the report added. Meanwhile,...
‘The postal executive must reject the deal and carry on with the strike action,’ south east London Communication Workers Union (CWU) Rep. Billy Colvill insisted yesterday. He was commenting on the CWU announcement that it had ‘notified Royal Mail that industrial action planned to take place on Wednesday, Thursday and...
MORE than 400 youth and trade unionists showed their solidarity with the Gate Gourmet sacked workers at a second anniversary benefit rally in Southall Community Centre on Sunday, that was followed by a great night of music and entertainment. The in-flight meals workers vowed to continue their struggle to victory...
MORE than 800 Liverpool postal workers remain on strike today against the imposition of ‘flexibility’ by Royal Mail. The action continues while the CWU Executive meets to consider ‘flexible working trials’ and the ending of final salary pensions, agreed last Friday by the Hayes/Ward leadership. The CWU told News Line yesterday...