Monthly Archives: October 2010
FOLLOWING the publication of the coalition’s Postal Services Bill, Billy Hayes, CWU general secretary, said: ‘The government has wasted no time in flogging off the country’s state assets without exploring other options. . . . Handing postal services over to the City spivs and gamblers that Vince Cable...
Doctors’ leaders on Tuesday warned the government that increasing tuition fees could result in medical students facing a debt bill of potentially £100,000 – a financial burden that could discourage many applicants from low and middle income families. The British Medical Association (BMA) said: ‘Proposals to allow universities to charge...
Three and a half million took to the streets across France in the biggest anti-pensions law mobilisation yet on Tuesday, October 12 in 244 demonstrations nationwide, and as lycée pupils and university students entered the fray for the first time in significant numbers. Lycée student union, Fidl, said that four...
LORD BROWNE’S Review was published yesterday, recommending unlimited tuition fees for university, with ‘the market’ setting the level. The coalition’s Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary, the Lib Dem ‘economics guru’ Cable, has made it clear that the government will accept Browne’s findings and begin to implement them this year. Under the...
Student, lecturers and university staff unions yesterday angrily condemned former BP boss Lord Browne’s recommendation that universities in England should be able to charge unlimited fees. His review of university funding calls for the current £3,290 cap on fees to be scrapped and replaced by a free market in fees...
A decision is to be made by GM within the next six weeks on whether the Luton GMM plant is to be closed in 2013, when the current commercial vehicle production ends. Although General Motors and Renault have renewed their joint venture agreement beyond 2013 to develop and build light...
AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai confirmed that his administration has been holding unofficial talks with the Taleban ‘for quite some time’. ‘We have been talking to the Taleban as countrymen talk to countrymen, in that manner,’ Karzai told CNN’s Larry King when asked about a Washington Post report on secret...
The future of the General Motors plant in Luton, IBC Vehicles, and its 1,000 workforce, is looking ‘doubtful’, despite assurances from GM bosses. GM says it is ‘committed’ to manufacturing at Luton despite doubts over the plant’s future and a sharp tumble in revenues at the site. Sales have slumped and...
IT emerged yesterday that the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, has been lobbying the Tory home secretary for changes in the law that would effectively place the police above the rule of law. In a confidential letter to Theresa May sent last June, Stephenson, one of the...
The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved a racist bill which would compel all new citizens to swear allegiance to Israel as ‘a Jewish and democratic state,’ a government statement said. Twenty-two ministers voted in favour of the proposal, which must still win the approval of parliament before becoming law, including...
Business and Universities Secretary Cable has confirmed his intention to lift the cap on tuition fees, as recommended in the Browne Review. Lifting the cap is expected to see fees rise to between £7,000 and £15,000 a year. In an email to Liberal Democrat and Tory Party members on Saturday, Cable...
US special forces in Afghanistan mounted an attempt to rescue Linda Norgrove after the British government in the persons of Foreign Secretary Hague and Prime Minister Cameron refused to back an offer by local Afghan elders to negotiate her release, after the same elders last week negotiated the release...
Chairman, retired judge Sir Christopher Holland formally opened a public inquiry into the death of Azelle Rodney at 10.30am on Wednesday and adjourned it at 11.10am. In his opening remarks, Holland warned: ‘It may be in the fullness of time that the public interest will demand that I hear certain...
LEADERS of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank came out yesterday with dire warnings about the emerging ‘currency war’. Speaking on the eve of the six-monthly meetings of these international organisations – set up in the 1940’s to try to regulate and stabilise capitalism in the wake of...
RESIDENTS of Huwwara village, south of Nablus, reported on Thursday that Israeli settlers had set dozens of dunums of farm lands on fire, destroying crops. Palestinian Authority official responsible for settlement-observation in the northern West Bank, Ghassan Doughlas, said the fields were in the At-Tira area of Huwwara village, and...
TENS of thousands of public sector workers demonstrated in all the Greek major cities last Thursday as part of a 24-hour national strike called by the ADEDY, the federation of public sector trades unions. The strike was against the austerity measure policies of the government of Prime Minister Yiorghos...
Shouts of ‘Low Pay, No Way!’ rang out at a 50-strong, lively picket of busworkers outside CT Plus garage in Hackney in east London yesterday. This is the first of four one-day strikes. They will be striking every Friday for the next four weeks. Strikers were furious at the management’s refusal...
EIGHT hundred redundancy notices have been issued at Oldham Borough Council. Officials of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council have confirmed to the GMB that the council have issued the statutory advanced notice of redundancy (HR1 form). The HR1 refers to all departments, but social care looks likely to bear the brunt of...
HUTTON, the Blairite currently doing the dirty work smashing up public sector pensions for Cameron and Osborne, has come up with no surprises. He is for abolishing final salary pensions in the public sector and for workers being made to pay higher contributions, in order to work till they...
FINAL salary pensions will be scrapped and public sector workers forced to work for longer, under plans unveiled yesterday by John (now Lord) Hutton. The Bairite Hutton, the ex-work and pensions minister, was commissioned by the Tory Lib-Dem coalition to review public sector pensions. Delivering his preliminary, 174-page report yesterday, Hutton...
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow has called for joint action to defend pensions against the proposals of Labour renegade Lord Hutton. Crow said: ‘It is a scandal that a former Labour minister is acting as nothing more than an enforcer for the ConDem’s in their attack on public sector pensions. ‘While...
THERE is no need for major changes in current Afghan strategy, US president Barack Obama told Congress according to a letter released by the White House on Monday. ‘We are continuing to implement the policy as described in December and do not believe further adjustments are required at this time,’...
The NHS white paper, which heralds the rapid privatisation of the health service, has no democratic mandate from the public, Unite said on Monday. Unite was responding to the consultation on the proposals outlined in ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ as the union launched a campaign to oppose the...
PRISONERS will be forced to work 40 hours a week, Thatcherite veteran Clarke told the Tory Party conference yesterday. The Justice Minister added that he hoped to see ‘many companies organising productive industry in our prisons’, where payment would be less than the minimum wage. A large number...
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has warned that the scale and pace of change contained in the government’s health White Paper risks leaving GPs at ‘breaking point’. In its response to the White Paper, the RCGP warns that ‘members have expressed concerns that the scale in...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared on Monday that Israel and the United States were holding behind-the-scenes talks geared at resolving the recent deadlock in Middle East peace talks with the Palestinians, claiming that peace was the Zionist entity’s vital interest. Speaking at his cabinet’s weekly meeting, Netanyahu said that...
YESTERDAY the employers’ organisation, the CBI, was joined by Tory London mayor, Boris Johnson, in demanding further laws to outlaw strike action against the savage cuts being imposed by the coalition government. In a report entitled ‘Keeping the Wheels Turning’, issued symbolically on the day the London tube workers came...
TAMILNET reports that the School of Law and Government of Dublin City University together with the Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka are holding two events this week as follow-up to the Dublin war crimes tribunal on Sri Lanka held in January this year. Dublin findings issued at...
London traffic was gridlocked during yesterday’s 24-hour strike, as Tube workers on picket lines expressed their determination to defend jobs and safety. At Mile End Station, East London, Michael Mungroo Station Supervisor said: ‘This strike is much stronger than the last one. It’s more effective. ‘This issue is No jobs cuts....
TWO HUNDRED youth and workers took part in a rally and celebration of five years of the sacked Gate Gourmet workers’ struggle in Southall, west London, on Saturday. The rally was followed by a meal for everyone specially cooked by the sacked workers, who were all dismissed in a...
THE Irish Government’s guaranteeing 100 per cent of all banking deposits has resulted in the Irish state drowning in a bottomless pit of bail-outs. Bailing out the Anglo-Irish Bank added 40bn euros to the bill that is to be delivered to the Irish working class and middle class for...
THE announcement yesterday that the work and pensions minister, Iain Duncan Smith, had won his battle with the treasury over bringing in a single ‘universal credit’ has rightly been described as the ‘bonfire of the benefits’. Under his scheme, every single benefit available to the unemployed, elderly, low paid or incapacitated...
THE mounting anger of GPs and consultants over the Lansley NHS White Paper has forced the British Medical Association (BMA) Council to retreat from its earlier position of unconditional support for the Coalition health document. A BMA statement yesterday said that ‘positive elements of the government’s plans for the NHS...
THE working class of Europe is rising up to fight the savage spending cuts now being imposed by governments across the Continent. When the UK coalition brings forward its Comprehensive Spending Review on October 20, the working class, youth and poor will rise up in Britain. The ruling classes of Europe...
Academics, students and community groups are celebrating a victory after University College London (UCL), one of the country’s leading institutions, agreed at last to introduce the £7.85 per hour ‘living wage’ for all staff, including cleaners working for contract companies. There are now nine London universities promising to pay the...
Senior Fatah official and Palestinian Legislative Council member Azzam Al-Ahmad said on Wednesday that the ratification of a unity deal with rival movement Hamas is nearing, as officials are scheduled to meet over the last disputed terms next week. Al-Ahmad said that once the last issues relating to internal security...