Monthly Archives: September 2011
THE Palestinian foreign minister said on Thursday that eight Security Council members are guaranteed to vote in favour of the Palestinian bid for full membership of the United Nations, and that one more vote is needed to guarantee a majority. ‘The Palestinian Authority is now working to secure the ninth...
THE NHS must address the significant variations in care experienced by the 170,000 patients who have major emergency abdominal surgery each year, says a new report published by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS). Norman Williams, President of the RCS, said: ‘The focus on reducing waiting times for elective procedures...
STRIKING teachers at Kingsbury High School in north-west London were joined on the picket line by parents and students yesterday morning as they showed that they were not prepared to accept the school being turned into an Academy. The 24-hour strike by NUT and NASUWT members at the school resulted...
CONSTRUCTION site electricians stepped up their campaign on Wednesday to defend pay and conditions against a brutal onslaught by a ‘cartel’ of contractors to smash them up. A mass rally assembled near platforms 10 and 11 at Kings Cross Station in central London at 6.30am with music, rapping and speeches. More...
PALESTINIAN envoys are battling for UN Security Council votes to back their effort to win full UN membership, while the United States is using its diplomatic big guns to make the bid fail. The Security Council held its first meeting to discuss the application on Monday and is to...
MORE than 300 angry electricians marched onto the Kings Cross Station concourse in central London yesterday, where they held an impromptu public rally. Union reps and officers made speeches expressing determination to defeat the threat by major construction bosses to tear up the JIB (Joint Industry Board) agreements and impose...
YESTERDAY the main trade union leaders were full of praise for Miliband’s conference speech. This was no doubt an expression of relief that he did not repeat his condemnation of the decision of the public sector trade unions to ballot for strike action in defence of their pensions, now...
MOVING the Public Services composite motion at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday, Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis said: ‘Conference, today we face a coalition with no democratic mandate – taking a chainsaw to our public services. ‘Public service workers, our members, keeping families and communities together, keeping...
IN THE middle of the greatest ever capitalist crisis, Labour leader Miliband, while the ruling class is attacking and robbing the working class and the middle class, has appealed for ‘fairness’ but has managed to equate billionaire bankers with oppressed people on social security. He also refused to...
DEFENCE engineering giant BAE Systems confirmed yesterday that it is cutting a further 3,000 jobs at sites across the country, mainly in its military aircraft division, just months after ending its last redundancy programme in July. These redundancies had been agreed by the unions on the basis of assurances by...
THE announcement that the ruling body of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will meet on Friday to decide on balloting their members on strike action graphically demonstrates how the economic collapse of capitalism is forcing even the most dedicated health workers into battle, not just for their own...
PRESIDENT Mahmud Abbas waved to the crowd of tens of thousands during a celebration in Ramallah, upon his return from the UN General Assembly in New York. After laying a wreath on the grave of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, Abbas told masses of flag-waving Palestinians: ‘The Palestinian spring is certainly...
DALE Farm residents won another reprieve in the High Court yesterday, after a judge ruled that Basildon Council hadn’t been sufficiently clear in its enforcement notices. Mr Justice Edwards-Stuart agreed with legal arguments put forward on behalf of the besieged Travellers and decided that the removal orders need to be...
ATHENS public transport workers were yesterday continuing for the fourth day running their ‘rolling’ strikes. The strikes were called against the government’s plans to transfer staff to other positions in the public sector and to put thousands on so-called ‘reserve labour schemes’ for a year, on a wage cut of...
NORTHERN Ireland’s Unison education and health members are to take strike action on October 5. Unison general secretary Patricia McKeown said workers in many sectors were being stretched to the limit. She added: ‘The UK Government did not think through the implications of their decisions to slice the biggest amounts of...
LABOUR Party leader Ed Miliband pledged yesterday to cut tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 a year if returned to government, as the party’s conference was starting in Liverpool. At the same time, Miliband’s Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said it was ‘quite conceivable’ there would be a coalition in the...
ON the eve of the Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband has sought to win the support of the middle classes, and also drive a wedge between the LibDems and the pro-Cameron wing of the Tories, by pledging that a Labour government will reduce maximum tuition fees from £9.000, as...
THE Damascus-based pro-Al-Gadaffi Al-Ra’y TV has broadcast a four-minute audio message to the Libyan people by Colonel Gadaffi’s daughter, Ayshah al-Gadaffi. The message was announced by the Al-Ra’y TV owner, Iraqi businessman Mish’an al-Juburi, within his evening ‘For All to See’ programme. He said he recorded...
COLONELl Gadaffi’s spokesman Musa Ibrahim spoke to Damascus-based Al-Ra’y TV at 2014 gmt on 22 September. He said: ‘NATO is playing a very dirty political game with the Libyans. It did so by suggesting that it would stop its blatant aggression against civilians after a global outcry against the outrageous...
FRIDAY saw stock markets around the world collapse further, following on from the dramatic slump in shares on Thursday, triggered by fears that the deepening economic crisis in the US is heading for a 1930s-type slump. After a bright start, which saw stock markets in London, Germany and France...
OVER 5,000 university students and public sector workers held an impressive and militant rally and march in Athens last Thursday against the government’s plans for more barbaric ‘austerity measures’. University students marched under their large streetwide occupation banners along with school students and local government, health and transport workers as...
THE head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Legarde, spelt out the task confronting the capitalist class of Europe last Thursday when she issued an ultimatum that European governments must bail out the banks and that the working class must be made to foot the bill. Speaking on the...
IN mass general meetings last Tuesday the Athens transport trade unions in the Metro system, buses, trolley-buses, and trains decided on a total ‘rolling’ 24-hour strike starting today. The strikes are against the government plans to put thousands of workers on a year long ‘labour reserve’ scheme or transfer them...
THAT NHS hospitals cannot pay back the huge multi-million Private Finance Initiative (PFI) ‘debt’ to the banks is well known. The coalition government and its Health Secretary Andrew Lansley have begun to weep crocodile tears at this situation and have announced that 22 PFI NHS trusts are on the brink...
HOSPITAL closures across the country were threatened yesterday, after it was revealed that PFI hospital buildings costing a total of £11.4 billion will cost the taxpayer more than £70 billion by 2049 as they are paid off. The Tory coalition says the ‘sustainability’ of at least 22 NHS trusts –...
MORE than 200 construction workers fighting 35 per cent pay cuts demonstrated on the Crossrail site at Farringdon Street in central London yesterday, brushing past security personnel who tried to bar their entry. They are demanding an immediate national strike ballot from Unite against the contractor at Farringdon, Crown House,...
LIBDEM Health Minister Burstow declared on Monday night that the coalition government was ‘right’ to announce the closure of Chase Farm Hospital ‘after years of indecision’, and warned that ‘a wave’ of such announcements are on the way. Burstow told a fringe meeting at the LibDem Conference that the...
THE NORTH EAST London Council of Action won big support yesterday at the picket of Chase Farm Hospital with its demand that the hospital is occupied to stop it’s closure. Cheers went up from the picket as car after car honked their horns in support, while patients, doctors, nurses...
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its growth forecast for Britain for the third time in nine months and warned George Osborne that further ‘under-performance’ will require a policy U-turn. However, a U-turn, and an attempt at inflating the dying UK economy, thereby massively increasing the UK’s debt, is...
MUSA Ibrahim, spokesman for Colonel Gadaffi, gave an interview to the Syria-based Al-Ra’y TV on the evening of September 18. He said: ‘We are still in Libya continuing the plan for Jihad, resistance and standing steadfast against this vicious, dirty war against our Arab, Muslim people. ‘The crusader NATO...
LABOUR leader Miliband is planning to allow non-Labour Party members to be registered as supporters, and to vote in leadership elections, in the affiliated organisations section of the party. This is to further weaken the trade unions who founded, built and finance the party, and constitutes an attack on...
THE MILIBAND leadership of the Labour Party is to invite non-party members to vote for the party leader in future elections, in an attempt to further cut the power of the unions over the party. Miliband’s ‘Refounding Labour’ plans will be voted on at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool...
THE NORTH EAST London Council of Action won big support yesterday at the picket of Chase Farm Hospital with its demand that the hospital is occupied to stop its closure. Cheers went up from the picket as car after car honked their horns in support, while patients, doctors, nurses and...
POSTAL workers and teachers are coming under attack as a result of the drive to cut federal and state spending in the crisis-hit United States. To pay for a ‘financial crisis’, the US Postal Service is threatening to lay-off 120,000 workers. This has prompted the New York Metro branch of the...
THE economic collapse of the eurozone continues to drive a huge political crisis for bourgeois political parties across Europe as splits on how to deal with the state bankruptcy of Greece threaten to bring down governments. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was on the receiving end of a major humiliation on...
MUSA IBRAHIM, the spokesman for Colonel Gadaffi, has accused NATO of carrying out air strikes against ‘schools, hospitals and residential areas in Sirte and Bani Walid’. Speaking on Saturday to Al Ray TV, Musa said, ‘Yesterday and today the mujahidin in the brave city of Sirte killed...
THE Egyptian military authorities expansion of the emergency law is the greatest erosion of human rights since the revolution forced the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, Amnesty International said today. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) broadened the application of the Mubarak-era emergency law...
THE Metropolitan police are seeking a court order to force Guardian journalists to reveal their sources for the information that Milly Dowler’s phone was being hacked by the News of the World. It was this information that led to the current situation where leading police officers, including a...
GREEK workers have embarked on a series of occupations of state and municipal buildings as well as mass marches. The actions follow the announcement by the Greek government earlier this week that a third of all public sector services and the civil service are to be annihilated. Meanwhile, university students are...
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is attending the meeting of the EU Finance Ministers in Poland to convey the alarm of the US ruling class that Greece is about to default on its multi-billion euro debt, and will be followed by Ireland and Portugal, bringing down the...
COLONEL Gadaffi’s spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, has said that UK and French leaders were ‘rushing to reap the benefit of Tripoli’s temporary fall into their hands’. He described UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Libya as ‘swift’ and said this was because they realised...
COLONEL Gadaffi has sent a special appeal to the UN Security Council to halt the huge attacks on Sirte. In a message, attributed to the Syria-based Al-Ra’y TV, Gadaffi said: ‘Brothers, members of the UN Security Council, greetings: ‘Terrorism and destruction exercised by NATO on the Sirte area is beyond...
SARKOZY and Cameron visited Tripoli yesterday, not to celebrate any illusory ‘victory’, but to shore up the NTC counter-revolutionaries, who are already fighting amongst themselves, with their NATO and ex-Al Qaeda wings organising to kill each other off. Their joint message was a grim one for the counter-revolutionaries. Cameron said it...