Monthly Archives: June 2010
General Motors announced yesterday that Opel/Vauxhall ‘have decided to withdraw all applications for government loan guarantees across Europe’. The GM statement said: ‘There have been no material alterations in the funding requirements of Opel/Vauxhall as set out in the Viability Plan announced seven months ago. ‘The validity and reasons for requesting...
BEDFORDSHIRE Local Safeguarding Children Board published a highly critical report on Monday, June 14. The report exposes a litany of failings by: Local authority managers; Local authority social workers; Local police; Local GP; UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) ‘Children’s Champion’; and SERCO. Commenting on the report, Malcolm Stevens, former senior government...
‘The immediate responsibility for the deaths and injuries on Bloody Sunday lies with those members of Support Company whose unjustifiable firing was the cause of those deaths and injuries,’ the Saville report stated yesterday. It added: ‘The question remains, however, as to whether others also bear direct or indirect responsibility...
TORY Prime Minister David Cameron and his Deputy Nick Clegg have declared war on six million workers in the public sector and their pensions. Clegg said on Monday: ‘Private sector workers have already seen final salary schemes close, while returns from defined contribution schemes fall. So can we really ask...
THE Greek government have stopped financing hospitals and the result is that patients cannot receive even the most elementary of treatments due to a total lack of medical supplies. Doctors at 20 large Greek hospitals have declared a strike since they have not been paid. In emergencies the patient and...
US PRESIDENT Barack Obama said yesterday that the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will have the same impact on the US psyche as 9/11. The impact that 9/11 had on the psyche of George Bush and co. was to decide that the time was ripe to invade...
‘These despots, this rabble, these renegades from my army, these men of straw who dare to present themselves as righteous men in the cause of this outlaw in San Domingo shall be incarcerated. Toussaint’s sons and heirs shall face the guillotine. These malfeasants shall not disturb my slumber!’ Napoleon Bonaparte ‘The...
THE new allegedly independent fiscal watchdog has downgraded the economic growth projections for the UK economy, and also cut its debt projection as a percentage of GDP. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says the shaky UK capitalist economy will expand by 2.6 per cent in 2011, down...
THE Tory Defence Secretary Fox yesterday revealed that Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, is to be sacked early, in the Autumn, for being too pro-Labour along with Sir Bill Jeffrey, the MoD’s most senior civil servant. Amongst those advising the sacking of Stirrup...
TAMILNET reports that the Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang last Saturday morning called on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse at the Presidential residence House. On Friday, China and Sri Lanka signed six agreements to enhance cooperation between the two countries, at the office of the Prime Minister DM Jayaratne...
‘The siege must end and the Arab League’s stance on this is very clear,’ said the body’s Secretary-General Amr Moussa yesterday. Speaking as he entered Gaza for his first official visit to the Strip, Moussa told reporters upon his arrival through the southern Rafah crossing: ‘The whole world supports the...
WITH more than 100 million gallons of oil already freed to spew all over the US Gulf coast, the ‘special relationship’ between the US ruling class and UK’s capitalists looks to be at an end. The earlier dismissals of the catastrophe by the BP bosses infuriated the US and embarrassed...
ISRAEL has been pursuing its cry-wolf policy since its inception. Successive Israeli regimes have followed the same tactic of presenting their own nation as the victim of aggression. All the major news firms and corporations have taken the same line. ‘Israel as victim’, has filled the headlines. These days...
The GMB trade union, which represents thousands of school support staff across the West Midlands, has written to all schools calling on head teachers to admit to parents and staff if they have applied for their schools to become publicly funded independent schools. More than 1,000 school heads and governors...
The Tory-led coalition government yesterday protested against leaks which revealed that the Saville Inquiry report into Bloody Sunday has found that some of the deaths were ‘unlawful killings’, and that therefore there is a basis for criminal cases. Thirteen people on a peaceful civil rights march were shot dead, and...
THE BMA’s GP Chairman Dr Laurence Buckman yesterday outlined, at the GPs conference, areas of the NHS which should be cut or reviewed. With NHS Trusts under pressure to achieve up to £20bn of efficiency savings by 2014, Dr Buckman outlined a number of areas which could be ‘consigned...
ON Thursday May 21, GM announced that ‘Representatives of Unite, the union, signed the UK Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and European framework agreement in respect of employee contributions to the Opel/Vauxhall turnaround plan.’ The statement made it clear that ‘These are part of an overall Opel/Vauxhall European labour cost saving...
SURVIVORS told a packed central London meeting on Wednesday evening of the violent Israel attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and the unconcern of the British consul when they were detained at Ashdod. Mavi Marmara survivor Jamal al Shial said: ‘I was on board the ship as a journalist. ‘The Israeli...
Medical personnel on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) participated in experimentation and research on detainees during interrogations following the US terror attacks of 11 September 2001 according to an independent report released yesterday. The actions documented in the report took place during the administration of President George...
THE surge organised by President Obama and General Petraeus in Afghanistan has been turned into its opposite by the Taleban. The Taleban have now organised a counter surge and are inflicting heavy casualties on the imperialist forces. Their co-thinkers in Pakistan have also surged forward and are now initiating military...
THOUSANDS of British Airways cabin crew marched around Heathrow Airport yesterday afternoon waving flags, chanting: ‘Willie, Willie, Willie! Out! Out! Out!’ They received enthusiastic support from passing motorists and other airport workers. Yesterday was the last day of the latest round of strike action by the 11,000-strong BASSA (British Airways...
HISTORICALLY, the term Star Chamber is synonymous with feudal oppression and dictatorship over the people and over parliament, specifically with the attempts of Charles 1 to rule without parliaments, by Divine Right, from 1629-1640. The Star Chamber was made up of Privy Counsellors, and judges, and its sessions were...
DESPITE the pouring rain, cabin crew maintained three lively pickets at Heathrow Airport yesterday, in the final week of their current course of strike action. At Hatton Cross, ‘Patrick’ said: ‘The whole airport should come out to win the cabin crew strike. ‘It is about time the mismanagement of the airline...
CHANCELLOR Osborne oversaw the creation of a ‘Star Chamber’ yesterday, to force through the planned £60 billion a year spending cuts. Osborne told the House of Commons that after inheriting the largest budget deficit in the EU the country faced a ‘serious national challenge’. He added: ‘After all, it is...
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, claimed in a press release issued last Saturday, that it has obtained a 100-page long sworn affidavit from a senior commander of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) who has fled Sri Lanka seeking asylum for himself and his family. TamilNet reports that...
PRIME Minister David Cameron promised yesterday that there are ‘painful cuts ahead’ that will last for years, and that he would be carrying out ‘difficult decisions’ to slash pay, pensions and benefits. He added that his dealing with the £156bn budget deficit and the almost £800bn national debt...
HEZBOLLAH Secretary General Sayyed Nasrallah last Friday stressed that the unity of Arabs and Muslims was needed to stand by Egypt and Turkey to prevent Israel and the US from pressuring them. He called for more participation in the Freedom Flotilla 2 which he said will be the door...
‘THE rest of the British Airways workforce must be called out on strike to join us in our fight to beat Walsh,’ said striking BA cabin crew member ‘Joanie’ yesterday, speaking to News Line using a pseudonym, to avoid victimisation. There were several very lively picket lines around Heathrow Airport...
‘Prime Minister Cameron’s plans to slash public spending will hit the poor and the vulnerable,’ TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber warned yesterday. Commenting on Cameron’s speech on the coalition government’s plans to cut public spending, Barber warned: ‘If you take tens of billions out of the economy you’ll ...
A call has come from the University Teachers’ Association, the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and 31 other Gaza civil organisations, ‘to the citizens of the world to break the siege’. Datelined ‘Besieged Gaza, Palestine’, it said on Saturday: ‘One-and-a-half years after the Israeli army perpetrated...
STRIKING British Airways cabin crew are calling for the rest of the British Airways workforce to be brought out on strike alongside them. They are fighting to defend the terms and conditions of all British Airways workers and today is the third day of their latest five-day strike. Speaking to News...
‘WE were wrong to allow so many eastern Europeans into Britain,’ says Ed Balls, referring to the large number of migrants from Poland and the Baltic States that Labour allowed into the UK specifically to serve as cheap labour for the ruling class. This BNP-type racist sentiment has been...
‘MY uncle was shot in the head, at point blank range,’ the nephew of one of the victims of Israel’s massacre on the Gaza aid ship, the ‘Mavi Marmara’, told the 25,000-strong demonstration to condemn the massacre in London on Saturday. The march ended with a mass rally outside the...
Striking British Airways cabin crew began another five days of strike action last night. On the eve of the action BA cabin crew told News Line that ‘It’s necessary to extend the action to the rest of the BA workforce. ‘Willie Walsh is trying to starve the cabin crew, some...
THE Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said on Thursday 3 June that there were still missing people from the convoy that was detained by Israel when carrying aid to Gaza. IHH’s chairman Bulent Yildirim said Israel handed over bodies of nine dead people so far. ‘However, we have a longer list, there...
Over 5,000 workers and students demonstrated through Athens city centre on Thursday evening against the Zionist pirates and their murders of the Freedom Flotilla volunteers. Earlier in the day, 31 Greek, three French and an American volunteer who were abducted, imprisoned and beaten up by the Israeli army, had...
‘BRITISH Airways cabin crew are fighting for the whole trade union movement,’ striking Unite member ‘George’ told News Line yesterday. Using a pseudonym to avoid victimisation, the BASSA rep (part of Unite) continued: ‘The mood on the picket lines is very upbeat. ‘We are getting a lot of support from the...
NOT content with destroying its ‘alliance’ with Turkey by murdering nine of its citizens and wounding many more, the Israeli government has let it be known that its forces will prevent the MV Rachel Corrie, carrying thousands of tonnes of supplies, docking in Gaza. This is despite the fact that...
WITH the British Airways’ cabin crew strike entering its 17th day (yesterday, Thursday), a report from a leading academic warns that BA’s brand and future success will be harmed by ‘an embedded culture of bullying and authoritarianism deliberately engineered from the top echelons of the company.’ In the report,...
ADAM Ingram – Armed Forces Minister during the British occupation of southern Iraq in 2003 – has admitted wrongly informing MPs that Baha Mousa was not hooded during interrogation. Baha Mousa was beaten to death in the custody of British troops on September 15, 2003, with 93 injuries counted...
HOSPITAL consultants yesterday asserted their determination to defend patient care and oppose NHS privatisation. At the BMA Consultants Conference motion 5, was overwhelmingly passed. It expressed deep concern that ‘some NHS employers are using the current financial crisis to attack Consultants’ terms and conditions, pay and pensions.’...
FREEDOM FLOTILLA Volunteers seized during Israel’s murderous raid of last Sunday night, many of whom were beaten and tortured (see page one) are now being freed in their hundreds as the Zionist regime grasps that not only has its attack on the flotilla failed, but it has succeeded...
STRIKING British airways cabin crew are completing their latest five-day strike at midnight tonight and will be resuming their next five days action at midnight on Friday night. On the picket lines around Heathrow airport yesterday they expressed their determination to win, whatever it takes. They spoke to News Line...
‘OUR ship carried two desalination machines, bricks and roof-tiles, 250 electric vehicles for disabled persons, a forklift truck donated by the Elefsina dockworkers and school students’ bags; we wanted to give these to the Palestinians in Gaza.’ That was stated in a press conference in Athens on Tuesday by...
Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi, who was on board the Marmara ship when it was raided by Navy fighters, held a press conference in Nazareth on Tuesday, in which she accused Israel of committing crimes during its takeover of the Gaza-bound aid ship. She called for an international inquiry into the...