Monthly Archives: August 2010
THE UK’S Bank of England yesterday followed the lead of the US Federal Reserve Bank whose Chairman Bernanke had on Tuesday said that any economic recovery was likely to be ‘more moderate’ and that it would reuse its quantitative easing programme to buy more long-term US government debt....
THE number of young people in long-term unemployment has soared by 41.9 per cent in the last year, the latest unemployment figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published yesterday show. The total number of 18 to 24-year-olds out of work for two years or more rose to 72,000...
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) yesterday condemned the coalition government’s decision to use ‘bounty hunters’ to tackle alleged benefit fraud. The charity was commenting on prime minister Cameron’s plan to use credit rating companies to monitor people’s spending patterns on household bills and credit card spending. CPAG Policy and Research...
First it was people on various disability benefits who were the enemy. The Cameron line is that these people are dodgers who should have their benefits removed and be made to work, or be left hungry. The state has already got busy to make the disabled pay for what...
SHEIKH Harith al-Dari, secretary-general of the Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), has said, speaking from Amman, that there is no difference between the Bush and Obama policies towards Iraq. Al-Dari said that ‘The AMS assessment of the recent elections held in Iraq in March is summed up in the...
TUBE union RMT is to leaflet rush-hour passengers at Euston station tomorrow morning, Wednesday, August 11 over cuts to safety and safety-critical jobs. This follows revelations that fire detection systems at the station failed last month, creating the potential for a major disaster that was only avoided by the actions...
DEREK Simpson, the Unite co-leader, was brought onto the Andrew Marr Show last Sunday to deliberately attempt to undermine the struggle in the trade unions to defeat the Tory-LibDem coalition’s savage cuts by a general strike that removes the coalition. His introduction by James Landale was like that of a...
Israeli settlers set fire to hundreds of dunums of farmland in the northern West Bank village of Beit Furik, locals said on Friday. High temperatures, dry earth and a water shortage all caused the fire to spread rapidly, witnesses added, noting a delay in the arrival of Civil Defence Crews. Ghassan...
JUST hours after Tory leader Cameron announced that council houses were no longer going to be ‘homes for life’ – but were to be short-term lets, with no secure tenancies, and that a spare room in a council home would be enough reason for an eviction and downsizing –...
The government was plunged into crisis yesterday after Downing Street was forced to correct a Health Minister who had sent out letters proposing the axing of a UK-wide scheme offering free milk to under-five-year-olds in nursery or daycare. UK public health minister Anne Milton set out the proposals in a...
The cost of a university degree will rocket under proposals from business secretary, Vince Cable, to tax university graduates, according to figures released yesterday by the University and College Union (UCU). The union has analysed different models to make graduates pay for their university education based on future earnings. Teachers,...
UK industrial output fell unexpectedly in June, the latest official figures revealed yesterday. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said industrial output fell 0.5 per cent in June, partially reversing May’s 0.7 per cent rise, rubbishing forecasts for a 0.2 per cent increase. Sterling fell half a cent against the dollar...
THE Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said yesterday that the government should ban strikes by workers in essential services, adding that this was just one of a number of ‘high stakes options’ open to government. Among the other options was a tightening of the industrial relations laws,...
THE ‘Elders’, an independent group of eminent global leaders, cautioned on Friday that ‘the international response to Sri Lanka’s worrying approach to human rights, good governance and accountability was a “deafening global silence” that may encourage other states to act in a similar way’. The group added that the...
The Chairman of the doctors union, the BMA, wrote a letter to the medical profession on 30th July regarding the new health White Paper (WP). This letter outlined how the BMA (British Medical Association) was responding to the Coalition Government’s Health White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’. The WP...
INTEREST rates were kept down at one per cent in the EU and at 0.5 per cent in the UK yesterday. The European Central Bank (ECB) has kept eurozone interest rates on hold for the 15th month running, as the ECB continues to seek a way out of...
‘TINKERING with ambulance response targets could lead to unnecessary deaths,’ the GMB union, which represents ambulance drivers, warned yesterday. The union added that the government’s NHS White Paper ‘gives rise to serious concerns over control of the ambulance service’. The GMB reacted to reports that Professor Matthew Cooke is going to...
INTEREST rates were kept down at one per cent in the EU and at 0.5 per cent in the UK yesterday. The European Central Bank (ECB) has kept eurozone interest rates on hold for the 15th month running, as the ECB continues to seek a way out of...
TORY LEADER Cameron yesterday unveiled the spectre of workers sleeping on the streets with his new diktat that council housing should no longer be for life. The Tory millionaire who has never experienced insecurity, hardship, poverty or homelessness, spoke out for an establishment who live in mansions or stately homes...
Lebanon’s president, prime minister and Parliamentary Speaker slammed Israel’s ‘aggression’ against the country on Tuesday, as Lebanese and Israeli occupation troops exchanged fire along the Lebanese-Palestinian border. President Michel Suleiman vowed to ‘stand up to Israel’s violation of Resolution 1701, whatever the price’. Suleiman’s office said: ‘The president denounces the...
Furious workers in the town of Bell in California have forced their city manager and police chief to resign over a scandal in which it was uncovered that they were paying themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year wages, while state workers are having theirs cut. Bell is a...
UNISON yesterday called on private companies to act responsibly and provide decent pensions for their workers, instead of leaving individuals struggling to make complex, often expensive, individual pensions arrangements. Responding to a story in the Daily Express yesterday, ‘British pensions are cut in half’, Unison warned that high fees and...
FOUR Lebanese soldiers were killed and at least four wounded when Israeli tanks opened fire at Lebanese positions on the border with Israel shortly after noon on Tuesday. Al Mannar TV news reported that a senior Israeli officer was killed in the fighting. Just before 2.00pm Israeli helicopters arrived on the...
THE Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni has refused permission to the uprooted families of Kumaarasaamipuram and Mayilvaakanapuram in Ki’linochchi district to resettle in their lands claiming that the area is infested with landmines, Tamilnet reports. These people were brought from Vavuniyaa SLA Menik Farm camp by Sri Lanka government...
WORKERS groups in France are considering legal action, after a shocking video emerged of black women and children being brutally dispersed by police in La Corneuve, Paris, as they protested against evictions. Police could be seen going into a group of about 60 people staging a sit-down protest and roughly...
THE former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, has warned that the US economy is heading towards a deepening of the slump that was ushered in by the 2008 housing market and banking crashes. Greenspan used the word ‘pause’ to describe the state of the US ‘recovery’, while...
Anne Boleyn By Howard Brenton Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside Until 21 August, Tickets: £5 - £35 IT’S the little emphases throughout Howard Brenton’s new play at the Globe that distinguish it as a modern take on the origins of the English Reformation. Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s second wife, and his divorce from Catherine of...
Danton’s Death by Georg Buchner in a new version by Howard Brenton at the National Theatre (Olivier Theatre) London South Bank until October 14, Tickets from £10 IF YOU get the chance to go to the theatre this summer, then here’s a play to go and see. ‘Danton’s Death’, written by Georg Buchner –...
TANKER drivers are being driven to strike action, the Unite trade union warned yesterday. The UK’s major oil companies, retailers and independents providing fuel for the nation have been warned by Unite that their strategy of squeezing the conditions of delivery drivers to feed profits will backfire with potentially serious...
IRAQ casualties have risen sharply amidst the political vacuum following the inability of the various puppet pro-Shia or pro-Sunni parties, led by Maliki and Allawi, to form a government four months after the election. July was Iraq’s deadliest month for more than two years with 535 people killed and...