Monthly Archives: July 2010
ISRAEL’S decision to block a Libyan aid ship from docking in Gaza proves its siege is ‘an act of terror’, the Gaza-based Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday. The ship, confirmed to have docked in the Egyptian port of Al-Arish on Wednesday night, was unloading cargo Thursday following a deal...
The High Court yesterday gave the go ahead for a legal challenge over the torture of Iraqi civilians at the hands of UK troops. 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 in...
THE Tory-led coalition is rushing through parliamentary legislation to impose on the Civil Service trade unions savage changes to their redundancy agreement (Civil Service Compensation Agreement), which the unions have not agreed to, and which will slash redundancy pay by two thirds, just literally months before the coalition sacks...
US Mine Workers union (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts told the House of Representatives Education and Labour Committee on Tuesday: ‘We can and must do a better job of protecting our nation’s miners.’ He urged Congress to approve legislation to strengthen mine and workplace safety laws. The bill, the Miner Safety and...
‘What we have here is a repackaging of student debt. Debt is one of the greatest deterrents to students,’ University and College Union (UCU) leader Sally Hunt said yesterday. The UCU warned that over 50,000 teachers face the sack in further and higher education, after the government’s Business Secretary Vince...
YESTERDAY the Reprieve charity reported that: ‘Previously secret Government memos prove Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the Foreign Office to violate its legal obligation to assist British citizens in trouble abroad – bowing to pressure from President George W Bush. ‘Documents released last night in the Binyam Mohamed civil court...
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has condemned the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade after he threatened the entire workforce with the sack if their union doesn’t agree to controversial changes to contracts. Brigade chief Ron Dobson is attempting to drive through contentious shift changes, and revealed in a blog...
WITH a 75% ratification vote announced late on 7 July, Canadian nickel mining and processing workers represented by United Steelworkers (USW) Locals 6500 and 6200 in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, ended a 360-day strike against Vale SA. The Brazilian mining company and 3,500 USW members now begin a...
WITH CPI inflation reaching 3.2 per cent (0.2 per cent down), inflation for June remained 1.2 per cent above the Bank of England target. RPI inflation (which includes housing costs) was at 5.0 per cent (0.1 per cent down) , while RPIX inflation (with housing...
LEADERS of the Unite trade union were campaigning for ‘peace’ with British Airways management yesterday, as a lobby of the BA Annual General Meeting in central London was joined by French and Spanish European airline workers. Letters from Unite were handed to shareholders entering the AGM, declaring: ‘BA Shareholders –...
THREE youths were immediately freed yesterday after the Court of Appeal shortened two prison sentences and overturned one conviction. Four others had their sentences reduced, while three had their appeals dismissed. Ten youths appealed. The ten had been arrested and jailed after participating in demonstrations outside the Israeli Embassy during Israel’s...
Health Secretary Lansley yesterday outlined coalition plans to step up the privatisation of the NHS, announcing the White Paper titled Liberating the NHS. In his speech to MPs, Lansley said that ‘all NHS trusts will become foundation trusts’ and that ‘our aim is to create the largest social enterprise sector...
PRIMARY CARE Trusts are to be abolished and replaced by Federations of GPs who will purchase healthcare for their patients from both the public and private sectors, utilising £80bn of the health budget to do so. There will be between 300 and 500 GP Federations across England, expected to...
Families with disabled children are going without essentials such as food and heating. This is the norm, not a temporary crisis brought on by the economic slump, says a shocking new survey by Contact a Family. ‘Counting the Costs 2010’ asked over 1,100 UK parents caring for a disabled child about...
THE Libyan ship ‘Hope’, a Moldovan-flagged cargo vessel, left a Greek port on Saturday night for Gaza with 2,000 tonnes of supplies, in the main donated by Greek companies and charities to break the siege. There are 12 crew and 15 volunteers aboard. The Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras said...
The coalition government is pressing ahead with plans to make GP practices responsible for purchasing health care in England, replacing Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities. ‘GP consortia’ will take control of over 80 per cent of the NHS budget and the commissioning of care in hospitals, mental health...
AT a time when the whole of the working class and the middle class is under the most savage attacks from the Tory Lib-Dem coalition, it is only natural that the radical bourgeois newspaper, the Guardian, should make available its Guardian On Line for a vicious attack on PCS...
CNN’s decision to fire a veteran Mideast editor over a Twitter message mourning the death of the Lebanese cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah is just the latest effort to silence critics of Israeli policy, Arab-American journalists say. CNN’s Lebanon-born senior editor for Mideast affairs Octavia Nasr was fired Wednesday after...
THE RMT transport union confirmed yesterday that it is mobilising grassroots opposition amongst rank and file trade unionists to an invitation to Tory Prime Minister David Cameron to address the annual TUC Congress in Manchester in September. RMT activists have already won votes calling for the invitation to Cameron...
UNIVERSITY STAFF and students are under massive attacks from the Tory-led coalition. Coalition ministers are pressing ahead with 25% funding cuts, and the UCU trade union is warning that 22,584 university jobs – academic and others – will be destroyed. Savage cuts of staffing on this scale will mean much...
If the government pushes ahead with plans for 25 per cent funding cuts then there will be a loss of 22,584 university jobs in England alone, according to new figures released on Thursday by the University and College Union (UCU). The union warned that a significant impact of the planned...
REPRIEVE, the legal action charity which uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay is delighted by the announcement of an inquiry into torture allegations by the Tory led coalition. It however insists that: l it cannot restore the reputation of the...
Almost 10,000 NHS posts in England, the equivalent of a large teaching hospital, have been earmarked for cuts, the Royal College of Nursing revealed yesterday. The RCN said that the figure ‘explodes the myth that frontline services will be protected as the NHS strives to meet severe financial challenges’. In April...
BRITISH troops in the Sangin area of Afghanistan’s Helmand province are to be replaced by US forces, the UK’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox has said in the House of Commons. The army has suffered its heaviest losses in the area, with 99 deaths since 2001. About 1,000 Royal Marines are...
IN his Emergency Budget, the Tory Chancellor Osborne said his government’s intention was to eliminate the ‘structural current deficit’ of the government by cutting Public Sector Net Borrowing from £149 billion this year to just £20 billion by 2015-16 – a cut of almost £130 billion! What has emerged openly...
‘We will use all the means at our disposal to fight,’ PCS civil service union General Secretary Mark Serwotka declared yesterday. He accused the government of ‘breathtaking arrogance’ after Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced the Tory-Lib Dem government plans to change the law and slash redundancy pay to hundreds...
ANGER IS growing at the attack on council housing and in particular because the drive to destroy big estates like the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle is leading to a housing shortage in London and other cities. After the Labour Party in Southwark pledged to ‘stand up to the...
‘If we get a tax on pensions and jobs and pay, I think that the inevitability of industrial action stares us in the face,’ Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) General Secretary Mark Serwotka warned yesterday. This came after unions were given the cold shoulder by the government which confirmed...
CIVIL SERVANTS are angry that Cabinet Office minister, and head of the Star Chamber to force through government policy, Francis Maude, is going to drive emergency legislation through parliament to cut the redundancy payments of civil servants and destroy their Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS). This legislation will slash...
TAMIL NET reports that Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers along with Sinhalese thugs are engaged in obliterating Koappay Thamizh Eezham Heroes War Cemetery (Thamizh Eezha Maaveerar Thuyilum Illam), the only one that remained in Jaffna peninsula, for the last three days, residents of the neighbouring villages said. The remnants...
THE new diktat of the Tories and the Liberals, that there will be cuts in government departmental spending of 40 per cent, means that capitalism’s time is well and truly up, and that the working class will have no alternative but to seek to bury it and replace it...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on Friday on his claims concerning the Gaza flotilla raid alleging that the Israeli occupation soldiers were forced to defend themselves against the pro-Palestinian activists. Netanyahu stressed that Israel won’t apologise to Turkey over the Gaza aid flotilla clashes and the possibility of giving...
GMB national officer Sharon Holder yesterday called for ‘a coordinated effort organised by the TUC to defend public services and jobs.’ She was responding to news that cabinet ministers have been ordered by the Treasury to plan for cuts of 40 per cent in their departmental budgets. In addition, all departments...
Teachers’ union leader Chris Keates yesterday slammed a BBC Breakfast programme claim that there are an estimated 15,000 incompetent teachers in schools. The NASUWT general secretary said: ‘Claims that there are thousands of incompetent teachers working in schools are unfounded and irresponsible. ‘They create a witch-hunt of teachers and condemn and...
Faced with a $19bn deficit, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered some 200,000 state workers to be paid the minimum wage because the state legislature could not agree a budget. The order means most state employees will receive the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (£4.82) per hour as of Thursday,...
PRESIDENT Barack Obama has signed into law the toughest ever US sanctions on Iran. The measures, on top of new UN Security Council and European sanctions, aim to deprive Iran of access to imports of gasoline and jet fuel and prevent it having access to the international banking system. Obama...
THE legal charity Inquest is welcoming a ‘highly critical jury verdict’ on the death in custody of Paul Davies. The jury at the inquest into the death of 42-year-old Paul Davies found that lack of proper police briefing and training contributed to his death INQUEST commented in a statement: ‘A previous...
TORY coalition Health Secretary Andrew Lansley addressed the BMA doctors union conference in Brighton yesterday, telling delegates: ‘Every step we take we must take together – I want to draw on your views and your expertise, starting today.’ He was treading very carefully, but definitely looking for collaborators. On...
The Iraq Inquiry on Wednesday released details of former Attorney General Goldsmith’s legal advice, given to Tony Blair prior to the invasion of Iraq, after the documents were de-classified. Copies of Goldmith’s draft legal advice were previously kept secret despite calls for it to be published. This legal advice revealed that...
A MEMBER of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) admitted yesterday that he is having sleepless nights, worrying about the state of British capitalism. Adam Posen said he feared the UK economy was facing ‘the renewal of a severe recession if not outright deflation.’ The latest Bank of England...
THE RMT’s Bob Crow yesterday called for ‘general coordinated strike action allied to community direct action’ to resist the ConDem coalition government’s assault on jobs, living standards and public services. Speaking to delegates at transport union RMT’s annual conference in Aberdeen yesterday, General Secretary Bob Crow issued...