Monthly Archives: July 2008
Britain was yesterday accused of ‘caving in to the Saudis’ after the House of Lords overturned the High Court’s ruling that the government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and legal...
The fight to save local children’s access to a sports ground in the shadow of Wembley Stadium continued this week as protesters reoccupied the site for the third time in a just over a year. Campaigners reoccupied the site in the early hours of Sunday morning, living in tents. However, the...
THE House of Lords Court of Appeal has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted lawfully when it rolled over in front of the Saudi Royal Family and halted its investigation into a Saudi arms deal which allegedly saw millions of pounds of bribe money handed over to...
Talks in South Africa on Zimbabwe’s political crisis broke up yesterday with no power-sharing deal achieved between President Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Just before their break-up, MDC chief spokesman George Sibotshiwe said: ‘The talks are in a deadlock. ‘We...
MPs on the House of Commons Business and Enterprise Select Committee have warned that gas and electricity price hikes in the near future will have serious consequences for millions of households. In the conclusions and recommendations to its latest report, published last Monday, the Committee says: ‘1. The evidence we...
BP’s profits are soaring, it is getting fabulously richer while more and more working class motorists are forced to take their cars off the road, because they cannot afford to pay for both petrol and for food for their families. BP has just announced a 6% rise in...
By Irish politcal journalist JOHN COULTER THE war of words between Unionists and Republicans over the British Army’s presence in the North hotted up as tensions between the two Stormont Executive government parties were strained to breaking point last Thursday night. While the Provisional IRA has carried out three...
THE Labour party and the trade unions released a joint statement from the Warwick policy conference yesterday. This revealed why the Prime Minister was able to leave the conference just after he had opened it. Not only did the expected trade union revolt against Labour’s Thatcherite policies not happen, the trade...
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) yesterday condemned the British state’s refusal to prosecute US Marines over the ‘unlawful killing’ of ITN journalist Terry Lloyd in Iraq in March. At the inquest in October 2006, the coroner said the troops shot Lloyd in the head while he was in...
MPs and peers on the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights are demanding answers from defence chiefs over ‘discrepancies’ in their evidence to the committee’s inquiry into torture by UK troops in Iraq. In a report published yesterday, the committee said it had been given assurances by Armed Forces Minister...
A THOUSAND people – hospital staff, local residents, trade unionists and other groups from as far away as Crawley and Cambridge – joined the march to save Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield on Saturday, organised by the North-East London Council of Action. The march, which was joined by local firefighters...
YESTERDAY in the aftermath of the bombing in Gaza that killed five leading Hamas fighters, and a five-year-old girl, accusations and counter-accusations were being hurled between the Hamas and Fatah movements. Hamas security forces have arrested dozens of people, most of them Fatah members, after the bomb blast. Hamas has blamed...
MEMBERS of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) were today made aware of a complaint by The Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign about being sidelined from the release of the MPA's Stockwell Scrutiny report. Members of the MPA were issued with a copy of a letter detailing...
AFTER the Labour party defeat at Glasgow East, one of the safest Labour seats in the country, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated that he will not be changing the policies of the Labour Party, it will continue to hand billions to the bankers and cut everybody else’s...
‘I AM confident that we will see thousands on today’s march to keep Chase Farm Hospital open’, said Bill Rogers secretary of the North-East London Council of Action. He continued: ‘This is the year we should be celebrating that we’ve had an NHS for 60 years. ‘But the closure threat...
A candlelight vigil organised by the British Tamils Forum in association with the Tamil Councillors Association was held on Wednesday, 23 July, between 8pm and 10pm, at the Parliament Square. This was to mark respect and in remembrance of over 3,000 Tamils who were killed as part of the Sri Lankan State sponsored...
THE US democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, during his visit to Palestine, refused to go back on his earlier statement, made at a Zionist rally in the US during his democratic nomination campaign, that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel. He thereby continued to deny the Palestinian claim that...
The UK House of Commons International Development Committee has called for dialogue with Hamas. The US, UK and EU refuse to speak to Hamas. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 52% of Gaza households are living in poverty, and unemployment there has topped 45%. MPs on the...
SPEAKING after talks in Baghdad on Monday, US presidential candidate Barack Obama said the puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had expressed support for a US troops pullout by 2010. Obama, who was on a two-day trip to Iraq, also sought to butter-up the hawks by claiming he had not...
AMNESTY International yesterday called for the new government of Pakistan to provide information about the hundreds of people held in the country’s ‘war on terror’, and to either release these ‘disappeared’ people or transfer them to official places of detention. Publishing a new 50-page report outlining the cases of numerous...
CIVIL servants picketing the London Identity and Passport Service Office (IPS) by Victoria Station, in London, had run out of leaflets yesterday, such was the level of public support. It was the first day of a three-day strike, part of the latest industrial action over the government’s policy to cap...
UNISON has welcomed new research showing the value of trade unions to migrant workers. The report by social policy charity the Rowntree Foundation was launched in Parliament on Monday. It hails the work of UNISON’s pioneering Overseas Nurses’ Network, which participated in the research, and the authors highlight the union’s value...
PRIME Minister Brown was yesterday midway to giving up his ‘there is no timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq’ line – imposed on him by President Bush – when he told MPs that British forces in Iraq will remain at a strength of 4,100 ‘for the next few months’. In...
FRIENDS and family of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday marked the third anniversary of the young Brazilian’s killing by a police death squad who fired seven bullets into his head. They marched with their banner to the Stockwell Tube Station where they held a vigil. Cousin Alex Pereira gave a short...
TAMILNET reports that internally displaced families (IDPs) in Moon’raampiddi and Ve’l’laangku’lam villages, located in the northern part of Mannaar district, were fleeing their villages and settlements on Friday. This was after artillery and mortar barrage from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) that has approached Iluppaikkadavai, north of Vidaththaltheevu. Meanwhile, IDPs from...
INCAPACITY Benefit will be abolished under the Welfare Green Paper just published by Works and Pensions Minister, James Purnell. The 2.7 million people receiving Incapacity Benefit will be made to work or, if it is accepted that some are incapable of work, go onto a new inferior benefit, the Employment...
‘With the economy slowing down, and many commentators expecting unemployment to rise, now is not the time to start blaming the victim,’ said TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber yesterday. He was responding to the government’s Welfare Green Paper which includes proposals for workfare that force unemployed people to work on...
CHANCELLOR Darling has told his cabinet colleagues there will be no more money made available for schools, hospitals or transport. These vital services face cuts, more cuts and yet more cuts, and privatisation at the hands of the Labour government. His Work and Pensions Secretary colleague, Purnell, yesterday spelt...
Around 300 medical students from across the country held a rally on Friday before holding an overnight protest against the removal of hospital accommodation support for newly qualified junior doctors. Thirty tents representing different UK medical schools had been set up in the grounds of Cecil Sharp House in central...
THE House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has called for an investigation into whether the British Labour government outsourced British nationals to countries such as Pakistan for interrogation under torture. The MPs’ report on rendition and torture states ‘that it is extremely important that the veracity of allegations that the...
In his first audio recording since the fall of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on 9th April 2003, Izzat al-Duri, Iraqi vice-president, declared that this year ‘will be the year of finishing the US presence in Iraq’. He said now is the time for ‘striking the enemy everywhere and at...
ENERGY bills will rise by more than 60% within the next few years, a report for the UK’s biggest domestic energy supplier Centrica said yesterday. The annual average gas bills could rise from £600 to more than £1,000 early in the next decade if the price of oil stays at...
THIRTY policemen and 20 bailiffs invaded the Wembley Park Sports Ground anti-academy occupation at 6.30am Friday morning and used grinding equipment to remove Hank Roberts, who was chained to a flagpost on the sport centre’s roof. Roberts, Brent NUT secretary, was then manhandled off the site, but not arrested. ‘I’m totally...
‘I HAVE to come on the march to save my job and to save lives. If Chase Farm closes, lives will be lost,’ nurse Josephine Owusu told News Line yesterday. A campaign team for the North-East London Council of Action was leafleting Enfield town centre yesterday, getting massive support for...
Picket lines were out across the country on Wednesday morning as 800,000 UNISON and Unite council worker members began the first day of a two-day strike against a three-year pay-cutting wage offer. Over 50 public sector workers descended upon Enfield Civic Centre yesterday morning for a lively picket. Paul Bishop, UNISON...
US and Afghan troops have quit the village where Taleban fighters fought their way into a US base and killed nine US soldiers wounding many more last Sunday. A statement attempted to cover the rout of the US-led troops by saying that the outpost had been temporary and that ‘regular...
TEACHING trade unions have condemned the government’s use of private contractors, hired to mark school children’s ‘SATs’ exam papers. The condemnation was in response to the revelation that Self Assessment Tests were being returned to schools with them unmarked, and recorded, wrongly, that pupils were absent from the test. It has...
