Monthly Archives: May 2010
IN RECENT days, especially after the Tories recognised that they would not have an overall parliamentary majority, we have heard many words about the ‘new politics’ that the Tories and their Liberal collaborators were bringing in, out of their spirit of enlightenment. The reality of these new politics is now...
THE National Union of Students (NUS) yesterday issued a warning to Liberal Democrat MPs that they must keep their promises to their constituents to vote against any increase in fees in the next Parliament, as party activists seek to challenge the Cameron-Clegg coalition agreement. The warning comes as the party’s...
THE new Tory coalition government is facing an angry response to its plans to install itself for five years, and stay in power even if its coalition with the Liberals collapses. The signed LibDem-Tory coalition agreement supports fixed-term parliaments which can only be dissolved with support from 55% of MPs. It...
The draft coalition agreement reached by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats published on Wednesday makes clear their number one priority is to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. Tory savage cuts and imperialist policies will be implemented with the Liberal Democrats allowed to ‘make the case...
OVER five million mortgage holders – half the mortgage holders in Britain – could face eviction if interest rates go up and current government assistance packages are withdrawn. That was the warning made yesterday by housing charity Shelter, which has written jointly with Citizens Advice, the Council of Mortgage Lenders,...
THE new Tory Secretary of State for Health Lansley was appointed on Wednesday and has immediately put on record that he will carry out more than the £20bn of NHS cuts by 2014 pledged by Labour. Lansley told Radio Four yesterday morning that Labour’s...
PRESIDENT ASSAD welcomed President Medvedev of Russia to Syria at a press conference last Tuesday. He said: ‘I welcome our friend President Dmitry Medvedev on his first visit to Syria. This is the first visit by a Russian president to Syria. Therefore, this visit is historic and...
The unemployment rate for the three months to March 2010 was 8.0 per cent, up 0.2 per cent on the quarter, the Office for National Statistics yesterday revealed. The ONS added: ‘The number of unemployed people increased by 53,000 over the quarter to reach 2.51 million, the highest figure since...
‘The governors of the Gulf Coast states, all Republicans, asked the federal government for help dealing with the BP oil spill – yeah, the government, the very organisation that their hero and mentor Ronald Reagan described as “the problem,” not the solution’, says United Steelworkers union (USW) international president...
Bank of England governor Mervyn King yesterday warned that the next few years are ‘going to be painful’ and that ‘markets would expect a new government to take decisive action’. At a news conference to deliver the Bank’s quarterly inflation report, King said he had met incoming Tory chancellor Osborne...
STUDENT leaders went to the Russell Group’s headquarters next to Trafalgar Square on Monday, to demand the Group makes public its evidence to the Browne Review on tuition fees. Students fear that the Browne Review will be influenced by the Russell Group – which represents the ‘top 20’ universities in...
A TORY-LIB DEM savage cuts coalition government was being assembled last night, after coalition talks between the Labour Party and the Lib Dems broke down. All yesterday the coalition battle had gone to and fro. Cameron said early morning: ‘It’s now, I believe, decision time, decision time for the Liberal Democrats...
THE Red Cross has confirmed that the US airbase at Bagram does contain a prison within a prison, complete with a torture chamber, that ex-prisoners call the ‘Black Hole’. We already know that up to 300 prisoners, including a number of British nationals, were held there, after they were handed...
OPEN letter to Middlesex staff, faculty, and students, 7th may 2010. ‘Dear Middlesex University staff, faculty, and students, We are writing to clarify our intentions and the purpose behind occupying The Mansion Building at Middlesex University. We are writing to clarify our intentions and the purpose behind occupying The Mansion Building...
GORDON BROWN offered the Liberals a coalition yesterday evening, and his resignation as PM by the time of the Labour Party conference. Brown, speaking outside 10 Downing Street, said: ‘We have a parliamentary system and not a presidential system in this country. ‘And with no party able to command a parliamentary...
UNITE, Britain’s largest union, yesterday announced a new round of strikes over 20 days at British Airways. This follows the third overwhelming vote by Unite’s cabin crew members at BA, rejecting the company’s ‘offer’ in a ballot last week. BA bosses failed to put forward any new proposals to settle the...
Euro-zone leaders have taken the desperate measure of risking all on one throw of the dice, after advancing an almost $1 trillion package of loans, guarantees, swaps and bond purchases to try to halt the contagion that has emerged out of the collapse of Greek capitalism infecting Spain,...
THOUSANDS of head teachers boycotted SATs tests yesterday on the grounds that the tests damage children’s education. Head teachers in the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) say SATs encourage teachers to ‘teach to the test’, so that other subjects are...
CHIEF Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the Americans will respond to a Palestinian demand that Washington guarantee Israel’s commitment to the ‘peace’ process, particularly with regards to settlement construction. He added: ‘‘We’ve made our position on this matter clear.’ Addressing doubts expressed by senior Israeli officials regarding the...
GERMAN Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy on Saturday decreed that the preservation of the euro required a 70bn euro currency reserve fund and an ‘intervention unit’ that must be in place by the time stock markets open this morning. The EU summit however did not meet for...
BRITAIN remained without a government yesterday, as the Liberal Democrats prepared to dump their proportional representation policy in order to strike a dirty coalition deal with the Tories. Negotiating teams, including William Hague, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin for the Tories and Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and David Laws for the...
SOME thirty thousand Greek workers, youth and students held a rally on Thursday evening outside the Vouli (Greek parliament) in Athens. Inside, the Greek Prime Minister Yiorghos Papandreou organised a parliamentary coup so that the IMF-European Commission-dictated barbaric austerity measures were rubber stamped by deputies with just a few...
URGENT talks began yesterday as Tory leader David Cameron demanded a ‘strong and stable government’ is formed ‘quickly’ to avoid ‘economic catastrophe’. This was after Gordon Brown had announced that he was still acting as prime minister and that his chancellor, Alastair Darling, was having crisis telephone talks with G7...
AS THE failure of the Tory attempt to become the government emerged on Thursday night and in the early hours of Friday, it combined with the impact of the Greek crisis to stagger stock markets throughout the world. At one point Wall Street fell by 1000 points before recovering, while...
ON Wednesday workers in Greece staged the biggest ever 24-hour general strike against the IMF–European Commission’s imposed austerity measures with millions participating. Planes remained grounded and railways did not move. Rock solid strike in shipyards, railways, post-office, and telecommunications. Record participation percentages in schools, local government and in...
The Unite union yesterday condemned the sacking by British Airways of a senior Unite official, BASSA branch secretary Duncan Holley, as ‘another act of bullying and intimidation’. The sacking took place on the last day of the union’s ballot on BA’s latest ‘offer’. The Union is recommending rejection and cabin crew...
AS 100,000 workers marched through Athens on May Day, and tens of thousands marched through large numbers of Greek towns and villages, it dawned on the international banks, the World Bank and the IMF that the latest Greek loan package is lost already, as the Greek masses showed...
THE Court of Appeal on Tuesday ‘firmly and unambiguously’ rejected the government’s argument that it is open to a Court, in the absence of statutory power, to order a ‘closed material procedure’ in relation to the trial of an ordinary civil claim. The court ruled that such were the...
100,000 trade unionists and youth marched in Athens yesterday against the EU-IMF savage cuts programme being carried out by the Papandreou ‘socialist’ government. Today millions of workers are going to the polls determined to fight the same savage cuts programme that is being prepared by the British ruling class for...
Al-Zaytouna article BY DR MOHSEN SALAH ISRAEL has a negotiating strategy that is designed to prolong the negotiations allowing more time for the construction of facts on the ground, putting it in a position to impose its will on ‘final status’ talks. In fact, the strategy can be broken down into...
Thousands of lecturers, supported by tens of thousands of students, were yesterday taking strike action against Labour government cuts and sackings at 11 colleges and three universities in London. The campaign team for WRP Enfield North candidate, Anna Athow campaigned at the Enfield College Picket line. Anna, a consultant surgeon is...
¡ADDRESSING the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference on May 3rd, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said: ‘having nuclear bombs is not an honour. It is even disgraceful. Even more shameful is to threaten to use it. ‘This is not comparable with any historical crime. Those who carried out the...
THE campaign for Jonty Leff, the WRP candidate for Manchester Central, has stepped up a gear on the eve of Thursday’s general election. While canvassing the Newton Heath area of Manchester we called on Antonina Turner who said she would definitely vote WRP, she told News Line: ‘Labour has let...
GREEK workers in the public and private sectors are preparing for today’s 24-hour general strike which is certain to be one of the biggest mobilisations ever. Tens of thousands of workers are already on strike. Last Monday government workers began a three-day national strike against the IMF-imposed austerity measures,...
THE US told the world on Monday that it has 5,113 nuclear war heads operationally deployed. This arsenal is supplemented by the warheads possessed by its allies France and the UK, plus the arsenal of its ‘strategic ally’ Israel which has a ‘secret’ stockpile of more than 200...
IN a press conference on Sunday afternoon, May 2nd the Greek Finance Minister Yiorghos Papakonstantinou announced yet another set of austerity measures verified later on the day at a Eurozone financial ministers’ meeting. The European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean Claude Trichet stated that the loan to Greece,...
SATs tests are being used as a ‘big stick’ to beat state schools with, says the president of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). The determination of teachers and head teachers to go ahead with a boycott of next week’s tests is hardening, and NAHT President Mike Welsh described...
AN official review into government funding of universities led by Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, will not be published until after the general election, because it is set to cause enormous anger amongst students, all youth and the working class as a whole. Browne at the minimum...
The University and College Union (UCU) has slammed Manchester College after it was revealed that it is paying its top earner almost £200,000, while planning mass sackings. Figures seen by UCU show that the top earner in 2008 was earning between £170,000 and £180,000. A year later the top earner...
THE Arab League, the organisation of the Arab bourgeoisie, last Saturday gave its backing to the indirect Palestinian-Israeli peace talks being pushed by President Obama. Top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told a Cairo news conference that a final decision to resume indirect talks with Israel will be taken...
Prime Minister George Papandreou said yesterday that Greece has agreed the terms of a financial rescue deal with the European Union and IMF. This will involve ‘great sacrifices’ by the working class and small farmers so that the bourgeoise can avoid national bankruptcy. The announcement came a day after police again...
THE Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) in London has issued a report on the recent Israeli order of mass expulsion – the Israeli Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration (Amendment No. 2) and the Order regarding Security Provisions (Amendment No. 112) passed on Tuesday, April 26 2010. Behind the euphemism ‘Prevention of...
