Monthly Archives: May 2011
A new report, Care in Crisis, issued by Age UK spells out exactly what the Tory-led coalition’s destruction of the welfare state means for the elderly and the disabled. Their research has exposed the fact that of the two million older people in England who need care provision only 800,000...
Age UK yesterday published a damning report, which shows the depth of the crisis in social care and its consequent human cost. The report ‘Care in Crisis: Causes and Solutions’ provides the evidence to prove that care and support for older people in England has reached breaking point. 800,000 people who...
An enormous rally of youth and workers with their families at the Vouli (Greek parliament) square in Athens on Sunday demanded for the fifth consecutive night the overthrow of the government of prime minister Yiorghos Papandreou. Once again, the most popular slogan was ‘Take the Accord and get out of...
THE Sri Lankan proposed private sector pension scheme has angered workers in the garment sector, with trade unionists warning of mass street protests and strikes throughout the country that could bring the government down. The first clashes took place last Tuesday, when an estimated 10,000 factory workers from...
AT the Group of 8 meeting (G8) of the largest industrialised nations, the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy voted for regime change in Libya and then volunteered its services to President Obama to negotiate with Colonel Gadaffi for him to stand down so that Libya can be recolonised and robbed of...
EGYPTIANS were out Friday for nationwide rallies to protest against the ruling military council’s attempt to halt the revolution, in a call that has exposed political rifts. In Cairo, several thousand protesters packed into Tahrir Square – the symbolic heart of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February – for...
FOR the fourth successive night, tens of thousands of youth and workers congregated in the main square of Athens outside the Vouli (Greek parliament) as part of the growing revolution in many European capitals. Since last Wednesday night, thousands have been protesting against the government’s savage austerity measures in all...
THE Libyan prime minister gave an hour and 55 minute-long news conference relayed by Al-Jamahiriyah TV at 11.35 gmt last Thursday. Al-Mahmudi said he wanted to shed light on what had happened in the African Union’s (AU) extraordinary summit. He had in front of him a draft of the...
Despite torrential rain, over 20,000 youth and workers with their families congregated for the second night running in Athens’ main square in front of the Vouli building (Greek parliament). The building is surrounded by hundreds of riot police despite the very peaceful nature of the demonstration. Similar demonstrations took place in...
AFTER initial hesitation, and no doubt after a talking to by President Obama, and after President Sarkozy jumped the gun with his announcement, the Tory coalition leader Cameron has said that the UK is to commit British helicopter gunships for close-quarter engagements against the Libyan armed forces. These will...
ON WEDNESDAY morning, at 9.00am, 15 NHS Direct Action and UK Uncut activists visited 2020health to protest against the think-tank’s role in lobbying for NHS privatisation; two were arrested. The think-tank, which claims to be ‘independent and grassroots’, has been a key influence on Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social...
TENS of thousands of young people along with workers and their families staged an enormous rally last Wednesday evening in Athens, almost filling up the vast square in front of the Vouli (Greek parliament) building. Thousands more youth demonstrated in the main squares of every large Greek city. They...
US President Barak Obama, in his speech to both houses of parliament last Wednesday, did little more than restate the old George Bush doctrine of the ‘New World Order’, albeit dressed up in more coherent language and with less cowboy baloney. He opened with a brief, and highly inaccurate sketch...
‘The likely date for the first coordinated action is 30th June, when 750,000 members of the PCS, NUT, ATL and UCU unions could all be striking together,’ a PCS civil servants press officer told News Line yesterday. A TUC delegation was also holding talks in the Cabinet Office with Tory-LibDem...
THE latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) GDP figures show two quarters – six months – of zero growth in the British capitalist economy. Official figures also revealed that last month’s borrowing figures were the highest ever recorded for the month of April at £10bn. The figures revealed...
‘We welcome today’s decision to bring a charge of manslaughter against the officer,’ said newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson’s stepson Paul King on behalf of the family yesterday. He was speaking outside the Crown Prosecution Service office in Southwark, southeast London after a press conference by the Director of Public Prosecutions...
FOR the second time in two weeks Irish workers and youth have been subjected to a powerful imperialist propaganda assault designed to shore up the tottering Irish capitalist state and to strengthen US and UK imperialism. Yesterday saw President Obama visit his supposed ‘ancestral home’ in Moneygall, County Offaly, where...
TamilNet reports that uprooted Tamils in Champoor, whose lands were taken away by the Sri Lankan government for India’s thermal power project, depopulating the Tamil villages and declaring the area as High Security Zone, have asked that they should be allowed to resettle without further delay in their...
The Spanish municipal and regional elections that were held on Sunday took place under unprecedented conditions as thousands of youth and workers defied the law and the police and continued their occupation of main squares in cities throughout the country. Openly acknowledging the revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world as...
The campaign to win UN endorsement for a Palestinian state will continue despite US opposition, senior Fatah official Nabil Sha’th said late Saturday. ‘Now that (Israeli Prime Minister) Binyamin Netanyahu has proved that he rejects the peace process, there is no doubt that we shall continue with the strategic objective...
Postal workers in London have voted by four to one (79 per cent) in favour of strike action against plans to shut three mail centres and one delivery office in London, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) announced yesterday. The CWU said it is concerned that the closures will lead to...
Public service union, Unison has warned of the serious dangers to patient safety if the Ambulance Services are privatised. This comes after the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust signed a three-year contract with the private ambulance provider Norvic. Staff working for private companies receive much less vital training than...
TWO million workers in the UK are joining together to fend off savage attacks on working people and their families. That was the message from Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, the country’s biggest union when he addressed the conference of the Public and Commercial Services Union, one of the...
‘This is the danger of using the private sector to deliver our health services,’ a Unison spokeswoman told News Line. ‘We’ve always warned that the private companies are just in it for the money. ‘They negotiated lucrative contracts that meant they got paid whether they carried out operations or not. ‘That money...
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last Friday that US workers want an ‘independent’ labour movement designed to help the working class, not a specific party or candidate. In a speech at the National Press Club, the head of the US’ largest labour federation (AFL–CIO) said ‘We are actually redoing our...
SUPPORT is growing for an international, independent inquiry into the 2009 genocide against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Over 10,000 people rallied in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday evening on the second anniversary of the May massacre in which over 40,000 Tamils were slaughtered by the Sri Lankan Army. The crowds stood...
Civil servants union PCS yesterday condemned the latest attack on the unemployed by the Cameron-favoured right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank. Following its latest study, the Policy Exchange called for job seekers to spend thirty-five hours a week looking for work or face losing benefits, and also for a return to a...
IN his speech on Thursday, President Obama made it clear that the United States is currently attempting to ride the tiger of revolution. He said: ‘For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change taking place in the Middle East and North Africa. Square by square, town by town, country...
Yesterday’s announcement of 1,500 job cuts by Tata Steel in mills in Scunthorpe, Teesside and Hartlepool, is a ‘devastating blow’, the GMB union said. Keith Hazlewood, GMB National Secretary, said: ‘The announcement of 1,500 steel jobs to go in Tata Steel UK Long Products business demonstrates what a roller-coaster...
Postal workers and their families staged a protest outside the giant Mount Pleasant International Mail Centre in north London yesterday lunchtime, against the planned closure of its subsidised creche. Communication Workers Union (CWU) member Angela McNaught told News Line: ‘Basically, we’re unhappy about the lack of information. ‘I’ve heard a rumour...
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow yesterday responded to the McNulty review of the UK privatised railway system by pointing the finger at privatisation as the source of the system’s cost problems. He said: ‘The inefficiencies of the UK rail system are entirely bound up with the fragmentation and profiteering of...
MARX says in his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ In 1169 – at the invitation of Dermot MacMurrough –...
THE South East London Cluster combines the PCTs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley. Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation trust is a large teaching hospital. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation trusts hospital are reducing spending by £53m. The 4% ‘efficiency target’ demands a cut of £27.9m (...
UK unemployment fell by 36,000 in the three months to the end of March, to 2.46 million. However, the number of people receiving the Jobseeker’s Allowance rose by 12,400 in April to 1.47 million. Of the 12,400 extra people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, 9,300 were women, the highest figure...
BY ANNA ATHOW BMA COUNCIL MEMBER THE destruction of NHS hospital care continues in London with the NORTH WEST LONDON CLUSTER. This includes Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in Brent, Harrow, Hillingdon, Ealing, Hounslow, Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. These have been divided into three subclusters (i) Outer – Ealing,...
OFFICIAL unemployment figures released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday, revealed that nearly two-and-a-half million people remain unemployed, one million of them youth. The figures showed a marked increase in the numbers of long-term unemployed and a sharp rise in women unemployed. The ONS said that 2.46 million are registered...
BY ANNA ATHOW BMA COUNCIL MEMBER In London the 31 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) have been amalgamated into seven clusters; Outer North East London, East London and the City, North Central London, Outer North West London, Inner North West London, South West London and South East London. These PCT clusters...
CONSUMER Prices Index inflation rose from 4.0 per cent to 4.5 per cent in April, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reported yesterday. ‘It’s a constant drumbeat of misery for hardworking families,’ Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis said in response to the figures, adding: ‘Whilst public sector workers pay with...
THAT the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants against Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi, his son and his brother-in-law, on charges of committing war crimes raises bourgeois cynicism to new heights. It shows the masses of the world that this Court is just another...
The NUT ballot of members for national strike action in defence of teachers’ pensions commenced yesterday, and will close at midday on Tuesday June 14. NUT Annual Conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of balloting members for discontinuous strike action in opposition to unfair and unnecessary changes to teachers’ pensions. The Union...
Health unions yesterday condemned Cameron’s attempt to defend the coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill to privatise and destroy the NHS, as ‘the only option’ to save it. In a speech on the Bill, at Ealing Hospital, west London, Cameron claimed: ‘There’s only one option we’ve got and that is...
THE government is to write into law for the first time the principles of a ‘military covenant’, which will give members of the navy, army and airforce, plus their families, privileges during and after their period of service that the working class of the UK will not enjoy. Prime...
BY ANNA ATHOW BMA COUNCIL MEMBER ON April 4th, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced ‘a pause’, a two month ‘listening exercise’, in implementing the unpopular Health and Social Care bill. He said he would listen to what people had to say about the bill which he is pushing through parliament,...