Monthly Archives: October 2008
The number of unemployed people in the UK rose by another 164,000 between June and August, to 1.79 million, according to the latest government figures. The rise took the official unemployment rate to 5.7% from 5.2% in the previous quarter. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the increases in both...
THE one per cent economic crisis levy on the wages of every worker in the Irish Budget was described as ‘a crude instrument that disregards the principle of ability to pay and will inflict further hardship on those on middle to lower incomes’, by SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor...
inflation hit 5.2% in September, the highest rate since 1992, rising from 4.7% in August, according to the government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures which were issued yesterday. The Retail Price Index (RPI) figure, which is used to work out benefits and state pensions for the coming year, reached...
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure leapt from 4.7% in August to 5.2% in December, with the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which includes the mortgage interest rate, reaching 5% from 4.8% in August. However, these figures are nothing compared to the real inflation rate increase which working class homes...
FORTY TWO leading writers will join Liberty in opposing government plans to hold suspects for 42 days without charge. The 42 ‘Writers for Liberty’ will showcase new works by leading writers including Philip Pullman, Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, Mohsin Hamid, Ian Rankin, Sadie Jones, Ali Smith and A.L. Kennedy. ‘42...
YESTERDAY the Brown government was emphasising that it had no interest in running the three banks that it was ‘part-nationalising’ (rescuing) with £37bn of the taxpayers’ money. The bankers will continue to run the banks with minor restrictions on their freedom to plunder. It goes without saying that it...
300 people attended a special Third Anniversary concert for the sacked Gate Gourmet workers at Hambrough Primary School in Southall, west London, on Saturday after a packed afternoon bazaar. Dhol drummer Harbinder Binda, the Rani Jaago dance group, singer Onkar Singh, the Baharan Panjab Diyan dancers and the Punjabi Centre...
THE run on shares last Friday, particularly bank shares, devastated capitalists and capitalism. The Royal Bank of Scotland saw its shares crash by 25 per cent, Barclays by 34 per cent, HSBC by 70 per cent, Lloyds TSB by 22 per cent and HBOS by 29 per cent. This was...
The first banks to get money under the UK government’s £500bn bank rescue plan are expected to do so this morning. Over the weekend, the banks and Treasury officials have been working on announcements on the handing over of an expected £36bn, to be made before the stock markets open. The...
Over 6,000 bus drivers were out on a 24 hour strike yesterday to protest at the huge pay disparity between the eighteen London bus companies. The Unite trade union submitted a London-wide claim to all bus operators in March of this year to challenge the current system, whereby drivers (and...
MORE THAN 700 nursing posts are under threat in Northern Ireland as part of wider plans to cut almost 2,500 health service jobs over the next three years. This is to ape what is happening in Britain, where plans are afoot to close down scores of District General Hospitals and...
CHANCELLOR Darling flew to the US yesterday to meet with fellow finance ministers, and Federal Treasury Secretary Paulson, for the IMF-World Bank Annual Meeting. Yesterday morning Paulson predicted that the way ahead was very tough and would include a number of US banks going bust. On Wednesday the IMF issued a...
SCHOOL exams in Zimbabwe should be cancelled because strike action by teachers has left pupils unprepared, a teaching union said on Tuesday. ‘For the record, there was no meaningful learning and teaching in 2008 and all examination classes are not prepared,’ Takavafira Zhou, leader of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of...
BUS drivers across London and Crawley, working for First Bus, Metroline and Metrobus, are staging a 24-hour strike today, demanding a fair pay rise and fair treatment at work. Osman Rage, a local Unite bus workers trade union rep. from Westbourne Park, said yesterday: ‘The reason the bus drivers are...
Over 500 trade unionists, youth and supporters rallied outside the US Embassy in central London on Wednesday evening to demand the release of the ‘Miami Five’. The ‘Miami Five’ are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, five Cubans falsely accused and jailed by the US...
YESTERDAY saw the big international push get under way to try to rescue the bankers of the world from the crisis of their capitalist system. There was a 0.5 per cent co-ordinated interest rate cut in the UK, the EU and the US, plus the announcement by Brown and Darling...
Brown and Darling yesterday announced a £500bn package of measures aimed at rescuing the banking system. The equivalent of $880bn, it means they are handing over $180bn more of taxpayers’ money than Bush’s Wall Street bail out, that took three days to pass through Congress. There was no vote on the...
US Defence Secretary Gates has condemned as ‘defeatist’ a comment by the British commander in Afghanistan that the war there cannot be won. Speaking on board a flight to Budapest to meet Nato defence ministers, Gates rejected the assertion made by Brigadier Carleton-Smith that a ‘decisive military victory’ should...
Billions more pounds were wiped off UK bank shares, yesterday, in the wake of Monday’s falls which saw £93bn wiped off the London Stock Market. The chief executives of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Barclays met chancellor Darling on Monday night, along with Bank of England...
WE WANT Tamil Eelam!’, ‘Don’t kill Tamil people!’, ‘Let us live in peace!’, ‘Rajapakse – war criminal!’ and ‘Sri Lanka – terror government!’ shouted 6,000 people at a demonstration opposite parliament on Monday evening. They were demonstrating against the continuing war being waged by the Sri Lankan government against the...
The family and friends of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday condemned Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick for her insistance that police ‘did nothing wrong’ in putting seven bullets into the head of the young Brazilian at point blank range. De Menezes was killed the day after the 21...
FRENCH Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner dismisses the idea that even one nuclear bomb makes the Iranians immune to attack, he told Ha’aretz in an interview on Friday. ‘I honestly don’t believe that it will give any immunity to Iran. First, because you will eat them before. And this is the...
THE Metropolitan Police chief, Blair, has already gone, his going made inevitable by the disgraceful attitude that he took to the police murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, for which no police officer has stood trial. He said just hours after the murder that the police had no alternative but...
UK share prices crashed yesterday, wiping over £85bn off the London Stock Exchange, with the FTSE 100 index crashing 391 points or 7.85% to 4589 points, the biggest one day fall since 1987. On a day of uncertainty and panic, the FTSE fell 100 points as chancellor Darling was making...
Councils will have to make further savings as the economic slowdown bites, local government bosses warned on Friday. The economic slowdown has left town halls having to find more than a billion pounds of savings over the next three years to safeguard vital local services and keep council tax down,...
‘WE have agreed to make a solemn engagement as heads of state and government to support banking and financial institutions faced with the crisis,’ France’s President Sarkozy said at a joint news conference following the three-hour EU summit meeting on the world capitalist crisis on Saturday. However, German Chancellor...
Prime Minister Brown, flanked by Chancellor Darling, told a press conference yesterday that, ‘the changes I have announced in the cabinet and in the government today start with the changing way we have to govern to meet these new times’. He added, speaking at 10 Downing Street: ‘I wanted to...
Doctors, nurses and health workers will take to the streets with local people today, Saturday 4 October, to defend the future of Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Cambridgeshire. Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust (HHCT) could become the first District General Hospital in England to be permanently ‘franchised out’ to private sector management, warned UNISON,...
WITH the financial storm clouds starting to burst around him, Prime Minister Brown has established with his cabinet reshuffle that he means every word when he says that his sole concern is the stability of the capitalist system. Since it was not possible for him to bring back...
Turmoil in the global economy has increased the urgency for a fair and balanced industrial relations system, said Australian Council of Trade Unions (actu) general secretary Sharan Burrow on Wednesday. Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra, Burrow warned working people would not be immune from the fall-out from the...
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair, who presided over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes and supported the right of police to shoot to kill ‘terror suspects’, resigned yesterday afternoon. Blair was a known supporter of the Blair/Brown governments and supported ex-premier Blair’s demand for 90-days detention without charge. He will...
US Defence Secretary Gates, and the new US military commander in Afghanistan, General Petraeus have recently been canvassing in London for a doubling of the British army troop strength in Helmand province. This followed a demand by the British commander in Helmand that another additional 4,000-strong brigade of British...
‘Industries must be nationalised under workers control and with no compensation to the failed former owners,’ said All Trades Unions Alliance national secretary Dave Wiltshire yesterday. ‘Anything less is to bail out bankrupt capitalism and will not protect jobs,’ he added, in response to the latest sharp fall in manufacturing...
THE manufacturing sector of the British economy shrank last month at the fastest rate for 17 years, that is since 1992, according to figures published by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) yesterday. This is the fifth consecutive monthly contraction. The CIPS survey came a day after the...
‘The defining moment for the International Community (IC) is right now, if it really wishes to establish its commitment to a principled approach towards Tamil aspirations in the island of Sri Lanka,’ declared a Norwegian Tamil representative on Tuesday, while concluding a fasting awareness campaign, held for more than...
PRESIDENT George Bush’s Bill for a $700bn package of measures to bail out the Wall Street banks and large financial institutions in the United States was defeated in the House of Representatives, by 228 votes to 205, on Monday. Two thirds of Republicans voted down the Bill alongside 95...
The following letter was presented to President Mahmud Abbas’s office on behalf of 78 Palestinian organisations on Wednesday September 24, 2008, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (Palestine) has confirmed. It stressed: ‘Note that ALL Palestinian political factions have signed on as well.’ Open Letter to President...
President Bush yesterday warned Americans that the economic damage to the US will be ‘painful and lasting’ if Congress fails to pass his $700 billion bailout bill. Bush said he was ‘disappointed’ that the House of Representatives had voted to reject his Wall Street bailout plan. In an effort to calm nervous...