Monthly Archives: July 2010
THE International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions has expressed outrage at the banning last week of the Iraqi electrical trade unions by the Maliki puppet government, whose advent, and the previous overthrowal of the Saddam Hussein government, the federation had supported. The Iraqi government, on 20...
About 100 Greek radio and TV technicians and journalists gathered outside the building of the Ministry for Labour in central Athens at midday on Thursday (right) protesting against a new Bill by the Minister for Labour Loverdos which annuls and make unlawful already signed collective agreements which include...
BMA Council Chairman, Dr Hamish Meldrum, wrote to doctors and medical students yesterday, following publication of the health White Paper for England, which proposes ‘very significant changes to the organisation of health services in England.’ In the letter, Dr Meldrum likens the White Paper to a ‘large curate’s egg; good...
WORK and Pensions Secretary, ex-army officer Duncan Smith, yesterday addressed the world about ‘our broken benefits system’, when most people know what has broken, and broken most horribly at its weakest link, is capitalism which can no longer provide either benefits or jobs. Launching a consultation document, Duncan...
In the early hours of Tuesday morning Israeli Police demolished a whole Bedouin village in the Negev desert. Approximately 1,500 Israeli forces were involved including Police, special riot forces, mounted officers and helicopters storming the village of Al-Araqib in a violent raid which began at 4.30am. During the raid which demolished...
CALIFORNIA’S Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal state of emergency yesterday in a move to put pressure on members of California State Legislature to adopt his cuts budget, which is more than a month overdue. The budget is opposed by the trade unions organised in the California Labor Federation...
Hundreds of striking lorry drivers and hauliers clashed with Greek police in Athens, all day yesterday. Truckers and their surporters have been lining the highways since Monday to protest against plans to open the sector to competition, as part of the austerity measures and a key ‘reform’ in an EU/IMF...
OVER 50 people joined a picket of the Department of Health yesterday, demanding that the government honour a pledge from Tory Health Secretary Lansley before the election not to close the Whittington Hospital in Islington, north London. This follows warnings that the closure plans are being renewed, despite the assurance...
PRIME Minister David Cameron and the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government have decamped from London to New Delhi this week to drum up business, such is the crisis of decrepit British imperialism. The Tory leader is heading the largest trade delegation ever. It includes six ministers, among them Chancellor George Osborne,...
The Sri Lanka government has suspended the dry food relief supplied under World Food Programme to the recently resettled people in the outskirts of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Security Zone (HSZ) in Vazhalaay near Achchuveali, according to Divisional Secretariat officials who had suspended the supply of dry...
ALMOST 96 per cent of oil and petrol money earmarked for humanitarian needs and reconstruction in Iraq after the 2003 invasion has gone missing, an official audit has found. The US Department of Defence has been unable to account properly for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion the Pentagon received...
‘WE visited 30 sites and found no Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq, but the United States was on a ‘military high’ and decided to invade Iraq anyway, Hans Blix told the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday. Blix said the Iraqis were very cooperative with his UNMOVIC ‘verification’ team before the invasion. He...
THE Tory-Lib Dem coalition government launched its White Paper Policing in the 21st century: reconnecting police and the people, on Monday. Home Secretary Theresa May described it as the ‘most radical reform of policing for 50 years’. The paper is to be subject to ‘consultation’ until September and will...
THE leaked 90,000 US Afghan war documents once again show – as did the My Lai mass killings of the Vietnamese people – the real, unchanging nature of imperialism and its wars, with its massacres of civilians kept secret, with US death squads targeting those that were thought to...
Unable to live on their wages, Bangladeshi workers are threatening to continue protests that have seen factories ransacked and led to violent clashes with police. ‘If they do not meet our demands we will have no option but to strike, we will create a militant movement, we will be...
THE US was shocked and shaken yesterday after learning that the workforce shrank by 652,000 jobs in the month of June alone. Former US Labour secretary Robert Reich has responded to these devastating figures that come at a time when Americans were hoping against hope that there would be...
FIREFIGHTERS accept a certain amount of risk as part of their job. When that risk is increased, they become concerned. When the increase in risk is caused by the penny pinching of their managers, concern turns to anger. Over the next twelve months, Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service (NF&RS) intend...
WITH the crisis of capitalism deepening and the US economy showing not the slightest signs of recovery, it is only natural that the US is now flexing its military muscle in the Sea of Japan, and attempting, despite its military setbacks in Afghanistan, to intimidate North Korea and the...
NHS bosses have started to implement the £20 billion savage cuts programme, officially described as ‘efficiency savings’, that the new Tory government insists must be carried out by 2014. The cuts are being decided behind closed doors in ‘virtual secrecy’ and include directives to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to dramatically...
INTERNATIONAL Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in a media release Wednesday said that it is alarmed by threats made against the safety of the family of senior Sri Lankan journalist Gamini Pushpakumara. ‘We call upon the Sri Lankan police and security agencies to take immediate measures to investigate the source of...
IN his emergency budget Chancellor Osborne made it crystal clear that the Housing Benefit of those struggling to exist under crisis-ridden capitalism was one of his major targets. He said about Housing Benefit: ‘Costs are completely out of control. We now spend more on housing benefit than we do on...
The South Wales Branch of the Fire Brigades Union is organising a ballot for industrial action to fight plans by senior Brigade management to introduce a new duty system into the Brigade, called the Self Rostering System. Under this system, which it is proposed will be introduced on three fire...
More than 750,000 people are at risk of losing their homes in London and the south east because of caps being introduced on housing benefit from April next year, the National Housing Federation (NHF) warned yesterday. The NHF represents 1,200 not-for-profit housing associations in England, and campaigns for better housing...
THERE was uproar throughout the Universities and College Union (UCU) yesterday, after the employers threw out the union’s proposal that huge pensions changes should be put to a ballot. Members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) will be denied a vote on changes to their pension scheme after the employers’...
As reported in the News Line on Wednesday, Blair’s invasion of Iraq ‘substantially’ increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former MI5 Director General told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. Baroness Manningham-Buller was head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007. She told the inquiry on Tuesday that...
HARRY STANLEY was shot dead by armed police in Hackney in September 1999. They said that they thought that he was carrying a shotgun in a plastic bag. In fact, it was a table leg. Not a single policeman was brought to trial for the killing. Five years ago, Jean...
‘BUSH Hill Park medical practice – reopen now!’ shouted members of a lively picket of the Enfield Primary Care Trust yesterday afternoon. The picket organised by the North-East London Council of Action called for the PCT to reverse its decision to close the Bush Hill Park practice at short notice...
UPSET and angry relatives reacted bitterly to the news yesterday that there will be no charges over the death of Ian Tomlinson during the police operation at the G20 protests last year. After waiting almost 16 months for a decision, Ian Tomlinson’s family said charges should have been brought by...
THE White Paper produced by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government says that all NHS Trusts must become Foundation Trusts (FTs) within three years. There are still quite a few of the eligible 225 NHS Trusts that are not FTs yet. The White Paper says: ‘Our ambition is to create the...
OBAMA’S talks with Netanyahu were to prepare the way for direct talks between Netanyahu and the Abbas Palestinian leadership, on a ‘final solution to the ‘Palestinian problem’. Out of the talks it has emerged that the US is to hand over $3bn to Israel to rearm and bring its vast...
The family of Raoul Moat are to pay for a second post mortem, after the first investigation failed to record taser injuries. They say they are trying to prevent a ‘cover-up’. Moat died after a rain-soaked stand off with police by the river Coquet in Rothbury, Northumberland in the early...
More than 100 care staff have received £964,537, after Excelcare sacked them and offered them new contracts with a 40 per cent pay cut, it emerged yesterday. Public sector union Unison took on the women workers’ case after they were transferred to ExcelCare, when Essex County Council privatised their care...
THE Tory-Lib Dem coalition government’s White Paper on the NHS contains plans for sweeping changes. NHS Commissioning Board The sole commissioners for the NHS will be the NHS Commissioning Board and approximately 500 GP Commissioning Consortia. These will control around £80bn of the £100bn NHS budget. As they will control the...
BA cabin crew yesterday rejected the latest offer from BA with a massive 67 per cent voting to throw out by 3,419 votes to 1,686, BA’s offer of a below inflation 2.9 per cent ‘pay rise’ next year with a below inflation 3 per cent the year after. At the...
ENFIELD residents yesterday made it clear that they are more determined than ever to keep Chase Farm Hospital and all its departments open. They were speaking to News Line on the latest monthly mass picket organised by the North-East London Council of Action. Katy Lowe said: ‘My daughter Zoe has just...
BLAIR’S invasion of Iraq ‘substantially’ increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former MI5 Director General told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War yesterday morning. Baroness Manningham-Buller was head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007. She told the inquiry she had advised officials a year before the war...
A MANUAL obtained by a children’s rights charity under Freedom of Information laws reveals details of extremely violent restraint and so-called distraction techniques for use on children held in Security Training Centres (STCs). The Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) is now demanding a total ban on ‘the...
TORY leader Cameron yesterday delivered his speech on the ‘Big Society’ but had a problem defining what he meant. He said: ‘You can call it liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it the Big Society.’ It is basically, however,...
Public sector unions yesterday slammed prime minister Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ plans as a threat to public services and the welfare state. Commenting on Cameron’s speech in Liverpool, Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, the UK’s largest public service union, said: ‘Cameron’s “big society” should be renamed the “big cop out”....
AS many as 2000 angry, school teachers, school students, parents, construction workers and supporters rallied at Westminster Hall yesterday, to protest at the Academies Bill being rushed through Parliament. The Bill the protesters say, will destroy state-funded education and bring in a two-tier system, pitting school against school. Many school...
The High Court has given the go-ahead for a legal challenge over the torture of Iraqi civilians at the hands of UK troops. Last Friday, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court, Sir Anthony May, sitting with Mr Justice Silber, granted permission for a judicial review...
Parents, pupils, teachers, school leaders, governors, local authority representatives and trade unions are lobbying MPs today to ‘Save our Schools’. The lobbyists will be arriving outside the House of Commons from 11.30am and will be attending a Central Hall rally at 1.00pm to protest at the coalition...
BRITISH troops are to to leave Afghanistan by 2014, and a phased withdrawal is due to begin before the end of 2010. This is the news that is being leaked to the media by the MoD and the coalition. The deal is set to be announced this week, by...
TWENTY FIVE per cent funding cuts will mean 33,844 jobs being destroyed in English colleges. This news comes just a week after an analysis of similar level cuts to universities revealed over 22,500 university jobs will go, bringing the total jobs to go in post-16 education in England to...