Monthly Archives: April 2011
Public sector union Unison yesterday slammed a demand from foundation trust (FT) regulator, Monitor, that NHS hospitals make at least 50 per cent bigger savings (cuts) than previously ordered. The union said: ‘It shows that the lessons of Mid-Staffs have not been learned. ‘That trust was so concerned with saving money...
THE News Line sends its revolutionary greetings to the workers and the oppressed peoples of the world on this historic May Day. The world crisis of capitalism has brought the most advanced nation states to the brink of bankruptcy and complete collapse. This has subjected the working class and...
STATEMENT BY THE ALL TRADES UNIONS ALLIANCE POSTAL WORKERS COMMITTEE POSTAL workers and their union are facing the biggest ever attacks upon their jobs, wages and pensions. This Tory-led coalition government is determined to finish what the last Labour government started, by privatising Royal Mail. Under the euphemism of modernisation, tens...
THE force of the Arab revolution, sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East, yesterday won a new victory when the campaign of the revolutionary March 15 youth movement forced the reluctant Fatah and Hamas movements to announce that a reconciliation deal will be signed next week. The deal is...
DOCTORS, psychologists and behavioural consultants working with the US Department of Defence-CIA have concealed evidence of torture. Hippocratic or hypocritical oath? US Department of Defence doctors and psychologists whose duty was to care for inmates at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concealed evidence of intentional harm and torture, said a study on Tuesday. In...
Jurors at the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson will consider whether the actions of a police officer amounted to unlawful killing, assistant deputy coroner, Judge Peter Thornton QC, said yesterday. In his summing up, Thornton said the inquest jury must decide whether Pc Simon Harwood acted illegally and...
CLAIMS by Chancellor Osborne and Prime Minister Cameron that Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showing 0.5 per cent growth is ‘good news’ were rubbished yesterday. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2011, following a decrease of 0.5 per cent in the...
STUDENT Alfie Meadows, who underwent an emergency brain operation after his head was broken by a police truncheon, when he was kettled during a police operation against a student protest, has been charged with violent disorder by the police. Once again the capitalist state is seeking to turn the victim...
TODAY is International Workers’ Memorial Day, when Public Services International (PSI) members, their families and communities are joining together to remember and mourn sisters and brothers who have been killed or injured at work. ‘We pledge to continue our fight for the rights of the living. ‘International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD)...
THE world capitalist crisis is driving forward the working class and poor of the world to carry through the world socialist revolution, and replace the bankrupt and completely outmoded world capitalist system with a world socialist republic. The huge increases that have taken place in the cost of living, and...
Leaked Guantanamo Bay files expose the perils of wearing a Casio watch and working for Al Jazeera, said legal charity Reprieve on Monday, after newspapers published leaked military dossiers obtained on 759 detainees. The US knew that many prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives. Some...
In a report published today, the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts has warned that the reorganisation of the NHS in England could ‘make the challenge of achieving savings for reinvestment even tougher.’ Commenting on the MPs’ report on Health and Social Care Bill, Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of...
AT THEIR annual conference last Saturday the NUT (National Union of Teachers) passed a resolution committing the union to a strike ballot over attacks by the government on public sector workers’ pension rights. That was not all, however, in a further motion on the coalition’s savage attacks on public services...
A bill that would strip collective bargaining rights from public employees in Oklahoma’s largest cities is on its way to Republican Governor Mary Fallin’s desk. The Oklahoma State Senate voted last Thursday to repeal a 2004 state law that grants negotiating rights to city workers. The current law applies to non-uniformed...
Libya condemned as ‘cowardly’ a series of NATO air strikes targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli early yesterday. Gadaffi’s whereabouts at the time of the attack are unclear. The Libyan government said between two and four large missiles or bombs exploded in the compound. The buildings, a library...
A Thousand travellers and gypsies face the biggest mass forced eviction in recent history. They are all being threatened with eviction from a town that they have built themselves on disused land outside of Basildon. In what has been described as a ‘pogrom’, Eric Pickles, the Conservative MP for Brentwood in...
Barts and London NHS Trust is planning to reduce the proportion of qualified nurses on its wards as part of a two-year programme of cuts, it emerged yesterday. Trust documents outline a plan to save £56m by cutting more than 250 nursing posts among 630 jobs being axed. About 100 beds...
THE millions of people throughout the world who rushed out last June to buy the latest must-have piece of technology from the Apple company got a shock this week when researchers revealed that what they had bought was a permanent surveillance device, capable of tracking and recording their every...
THE US military’s top officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, has accused Pakistan’s spy agency of having links with Taleban fighters who are targeting US forces. Mullen says that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has a ‘long-standing relationship’ with the Afghan insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani. He made his comments during talks in the...
THE Colombo High Court allowed on Wednesday an application by the accused Sarath Fonseka, retired Commander of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), to reconsider his decision to give evidence on behalf of the defence in the controversial ‘white flag’ case. This was due to the current tense situation in the...
The British Medical Association (BMA) yesterday condemned as ‘unacceptable’ the terrorising and detention of doctors in Bahrain by the feudal regime that is armed and supported by the UK. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of Council at the BMA said: ‘It is completely unacceptable that medical professionals who are carrying out...
‘WE’RE having a very good picket today, enjoying the sunshine,’ North-East London Council of Action Secretary Bill Rogers told News Line on Tuesday. He continued: ‘Lots of staff have joined our campaign and agree with an occupation to stop the closure of Chase Farm A&E, Maternity and Children’s departments. ‘They...
Banks are relying on the taxpayer for £512 billion support this year, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee reported yesterday. The parliamentary committee was also astonished at the inability of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyd’s to assure the Treasury that their assets were...
THE Committee of Public Accounts today publishes a report which reveals in the words of its chair Margaret Hodge that: ‘The peak of the financial crisis may have passed but taxpayer support for UK banks remains extensive and the risks to the public finance from the banking sector are...
TEN British military officers are to be sent to Libya to train Libyan counter-revolutionaries along with a number of French officers. Foreign Secretary Hague announced yesterday that ‘The National Security Council has decided that we will now move quickly to expand the team already in Benghazi to include an additional...
THE deepening world capitalist crisis is poised to see entire nation states defaulting, plunging their banks into an even more desperate crisis, deepening the worldwide slump, and sharpening the class war to the point of revolutionary explosions in the major capitalist states over which class is to pay for...
Protests resumed in Yemen on Monday after a fruitless meeting with Gulf mediators and late night demonstrations turned violent in Sanaa. The streets of Sanaa appeared quiet on Monday following overnight clashes with security forces. Late on Sunday, hundreds of thousands of men and women protested against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s...
SRI Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, during a meeting held at Temple Trees with electoral officers, declared that he is willing to go even to the gallows to safeguard his motherland, reports TamilNet. ‘Certain groups with vested interest are still hell bent on bringing disrepute to Sri Lanka, almost two years...
RATIONING is denying many thousands of patients much-needed surgery, leaving them in excruciating, unnecessary pain as NHS trusts proscribe certain procedures in unofficial ‘local lists’, the Federation of Surgical Specialty Associations (FSSA) accuses in an open letter. The FSSA, which represents 15,000 surgeons is meeting in Edinburgh today ‘to further...
When the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, concluded a summit of the bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the statement that the world is ‘one shock away from a full-blown crisis’ then it is a racing certainty that the full-blown crisis is already upon us. All...
‘UCU and Unison staff will resist all cuts to courses, jobs and provision at London Met by whatever means, including industrial action.’ University and College Union London Metropolitan University branch secretary Cliff Snaith added yesterday that ‘management must reverse direction.’ He was responding to London Met plans to cut hundreds of...
FIRST of all they embraced Gadaffi like a long lost brother in 2004, just one year after the mass slaughter in Iraq. The 2004 deal-manoeuvre was carried out by the butcher of Iraq, Tony Blair. Gadaffi presumed it was a permanent arrangement. Libyan oil resources were opened up...
THE survey by the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) into child poverty has exposed what the reality of bankrupt capitalism means for millions of workers and their families in Britain in the second decade of the 21st century. Three quarters of the 627 teachers, from primary school right through...
Five MPs yesterday urged a recall of parliament after the publication of a joint letter from US President Obama, French President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron advocating regime change in Libya. First to make the call was House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee member, Tory MP John Baron. He has written...
Officials in Doha have confirmed that Qatar is secretly supplying French-made ‘Milan’ anti-tank missiles to Libyan counter-revolutionaries in Benghazi, as part of the western powers’ strategy of working to overthrow the Gadaffi regime. The move, organised by France and the UK, breaches the UN arms embargo. It emerged yesterday that ...
BP yesterday faced angry protesters – including Louisiana fishermen, Canadian Indians opposed to Tar Sands, and locked out UK construction workers – at its first annual general meeting since the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Fishermen representing Louisiana Gulf communities were refused entry into the AGM. Byron Encalade, president of...
RISING costs and rampant price inflation are leaving half of older people living on the breadline. According to the AGE UK charity nearly half are just ‘getting by’, while one in ten admit they are really struggling. Pensioners spend a larger percentage of their budget on food and fuel. Over the...
THE Libyan people and their armed forces are more than giving NATO a run for its money. In fact they are bringing the ‘mighty war machine’ to its knees. Libyan TV has been reporting on the NATO bombing of of Misratah, Al-Aziziyah and Sirte, showing the results. A military official said...
NURSES passed a motion of no confidence in Health Secretary Lansley and his Health and Social Care Bill, with a vote of 98.75% in favour, at the RCN annual conference in Liverpool yesterday. Five hundred delegates representing the Royal College of Nursing’s 400,000 membership voted For: 478 (98.75...
THE RCN (Royal College of Nursing) yesterday carried a 97% vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Lansley, with 478 for six against and 13 abstentions. This was the RCN response to the Tory coalition’s attempt to push through the Health and Social Care Bill to slash, cut and privatise...
THE announcement by the Coalition Government back in May 2010 that it would be ending the detention of children for immigration purposes was widely welcomed. Finally the wealth of accumulated evidence on the gap between policy and practice in decisions to detain, and on the negative impacts of detention...
OVER 150 people attended a public meeting organised by the Tar-Sands Network in east London on Tuesday night, in preparation for today’s lobby of the BP Annual General Meeting. Opening the meeting, Jess Worth of the Tar-Sands Network said: ‘What we are seeing tonight is the coming together of a...
The Swaziland government has banned a peaceful protest planned by the trade union movement for 12-14 April. South African trade unions are supporting Swaziland workers. The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) declared on Sunday it has fully committed itself to the struggle for democracy in Swaziland and especially the activities...
EARLIER this week French aircraft bombed the positions of the anti-imperialist forces in the Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) led by Laurent Gbagbo, while French special forces stormed Gbagbo’s headquarters arresting him, and slapping him in the face to teach the black African leader that the traditional masters were back!...