Monthly Archives: December 2011
Margaret Thatcher considered arming the police during the riots of 1981, whilst a section of her government counselled that Liverpool should be abandoned to ‘managed decline’. The information has been released under the 30-year rule from the National Archive files. A secret Home Office report in Thatcher’s personal file warned her...
NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar yesterday launched an attack on NHS hospitals, saying that at least 25 per cent of hospital patients should not be in hospital at all. The NHS bosses’ leader said that at least one in four patients would be better off being cared for in...
Israeli authorities on Wednesday approved 130 new settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem. Jerusalem municipality gave the go-ahead to build three 12-storey tower blocks in Gilo settlement. The council also approved plans to build tourism centres in Silwan. Fakhri Abu Diab, head of the Silwan Committee for defending Palestinians’ land and...
The Teamsters Union, which represents art handlers at Sotheby’s Auction House, has created an online petition that asks Sotheby’s to end its five-month-long lock-out. Sotheby’s locked out its staff of 43 art handlers in July.These workers, most of whom are minorities, have been without paychecks ever since. The auction house hired...
IRAN on Tuesday fired a shot across the bows of the imperialist powers when it threatened to halt the vital oil transport route from the Gulf to all parts of the planet by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that ‘not a drop of oil...
The US administration has failed dismally in the case of Sri Lanka, with catastrophic consequences, commented Tamil legal activists in the United States on Tuesday. These consequences applied: (a) to the many tens of thousands of Tamil civilians killed whom the US knowingly failed to protect, under the Blake architected...
A group of seven leading public health specialists, past presidents of the UK Faculty of Public Health, have called for the Health and Social Care Bill to be withdrawn, because of its ‘threat to the integrity and cohesion of the NHS’. They warn of its likely effect to ‘widen inequalities...
THE BMA and the main TUC trade unions are completely opposed to the Health and Social Care Bill and have given up all efforts to make it palatable. The BMA has pledged to organise a public campaign to force the government to abandon the Bill. Now the time has arrived...
THE HEALTH and Social Care Bill has been revised to allow nearly half of foundation hospital income to be raised from private patient beds and operations. Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, wants to abolish the current two per cent cap, introduced by Labour in 2003, on private patients, and raise...
Sir Gus O’Donnell, the most senior civil servant in the country, has broken cover with the public admission that the crisis of the capitalist system is so deep, so profound and so dangerous that it spells the end of the road for the British bourgeoisie and the complete break-up of...
A nurse working at Chase Farm hospital is facing an eviction notice that would leave her homeless by the new year. Gloria Ankrah is being threatened with eviction from the nurses’ quarters that she has lived in for the past twenty years. The nurses’ quarters are situated within the grounds of...
The Egyptian revolution is advancing, with thousands rallying yesterday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a ‘Friday of Reclaiming Honour’ protest against military and police forces’ assaults on demonstrators over the last week. Political parties and groups – including the Wasat Party, Free Egyptians Party, Tagammu Party, Egyptian Current Party, Egypt...
EVERY Doctor, nurse, patient and staff member that joined the Xmas mass picket outside Chase Farm Hospital last Wednesday agreed that the only way to save the hospital is to occupy the departments threatened with closure. The mass Xmas picket of Chase Farm was called by the North East London...
PAKISTAN’S Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said that conspirators are plotting to bring down his government. He has also accused the military of being a state within a state and that it has to be accountable to parliament. However, his relations with the US military have already forced the resignation...
ON December 20th the major local government trade unions, after coming under massive attack from their local government members, suspended their support, agreed on December 19, for the coalition government’s pension busting plan. The Unite statement said: ‘The Local Government Trade Unions have been surprised by the response from...
HOMELESS people die thirty years before the national average, says the latest research from Sheffield University commissioned by Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people. ‘Homelessness: A silent killer’ finds that homeless men are dying at 47 years old and women at 43 years old, in stark contrast to...
THE Unite and Unison trade unions have joined with the GMB in suspending the Heads of Agreement with the Coalition government on destroying public sector pensions. Previously they had said that everything that was possible to achieve had been achieved. But following what the GMB described as a ‘dealbreaker’ intervention by...
A WEEKEND explosion at a Shanghai factory run by Apple supplier Pegatron injured 61 workers, 23 of whom were hospitalised according to the Taiwan-based components maker. An explosion in May at another factory operated by Apple’s main parts supplier, Foxconn, killed three workers. Apple and its Taiwan-based suppliers of parts...
THE North East London Council of Action organised a mass Xmas Picket outside the Chase Farm Hospital yesterday to step up the fight to occupy the hospital and stop the closure of its Maternity, Paediatrics and A&E departments. There was more support than ever as patients, doctors, nurses, other staff...
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) held a highly successful Central Committee meeting (CC) from Sunday the 11th to Wednesday the 14th of December 2011, at Vincent Mabuyakhulu Conference Centre, Newtown, Johannesburg, Gauteng province. In a statement issued after the meeting, NUMSA said: ‘The CC noted the...
THE Trade union bureaucracy, led by TUC leader Barber and Unison leader Prentis, have shown clearly, with their position that the trade unions have got as much as they can get on the pensions issue, that they are prepared to help the bosses not only smash public sector...
A report published yesterday says that police will be allowed to use water cannons, baton rounds and even firearms to combat any repeat of the youth uprising that was triggered by the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. The report produced by The Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) called ‘The...
Yesterday in parliament the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that the coalition government intended to accept ‘in full’ the proposals on reforming the banks contained in the report by Sir John Vickers into the spectacular crash of Northern Rock and Royal Bank of Scotland – crashes that came close...
THE pcs civil servants union yesterday rejected the government’s pensions plan to force public servants to pay more and work longer for less in retirement, saying nothing had changed and there was no deal. They were joined by the Unite trade union who stated that the same situation applies to...
THE reformist trade union leaders are once again, on the pensions issue, showing that they are organically incapable of defending the basic gains of the working class, whether it is on jobs, wages, or pensions. Faced with a ruthless ruling class which is stating quite openly that there can only...
PRESENTLY, world imperialism is attempting to enforce its presence and its influence in the different parts of the globe. The bloody aggression against Libya and the murder of its leader Muammar al-Gadaffi is only one example of this dangerous tendency. US, British and French imperialism coordinated their efforts in the...
AT last Thursday’s meeting of the TUC’s Public Service Liaison Group, TUC leader Brendan Barber urged trade unions to capitulate and sign up to the government’s latest non-offer over public sector pensions. Unison leader Dave Prentis joined Barber in recommending acceptance of the Tory deal. A capitulation will allow the...
Tory prime minister Cameron’s decision to veto an EU-wide treaty change over eurozone financial rules was ‘largely political’, Business Secretary Vince Cable said yesterday. He told the Andrew Marr show that Cameron had ‘got a short-term boost from it, but it doesn’t actually deal with the big long-term problems in...
THE DIARY OF JOHN LOWE The 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire edited by John Symcox These diary excerpts are a tribute to the heroic and determined minority of Nottinghamshire NUM members, as seen through the eyes of the Clipstone Colliery strike leader. They stuck it out in the face of Tory-organised mass...
ON Thursday, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, issued the starkest warning yet that the debt crisis gripping the eurozone is set to bring down the entire world banking system and usher in an epoch of protectionism and isolationism leading inevitably toward war between the...
The continued austerity programme is costing jobs and making recovery almost impossible, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said yesterday. Official figures released yesterday showed that the Irish gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 1.9% in the third quarter of this year. The gross national product (GNP) which excludes profits made...
Trade unions yesterday condemned the Cameron government’s just-announced decision to press ahead with increasing the pension contributions of public service workers from April 2012. Teachers union NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: ‘Choosing to announce the increase in contributions in the final hours before the national discussions on pension changes have concluded is unnecessarily...
THE House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the requirement for all the remaining 113 hospital trusts to achieve foundation business status has warned: ‘Twenty hospital trusts have declared themselves unviable even in their current form.’ It added: ‘The challenges facing those hospitals which have still to attain...
EIGHT and a half years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 21 years after the deadly UN sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, which took hundreds of thousands of children’s lives, and after the 1991 Gulf War, US president Barak Obama has declared: ‘The war is...
THE United States on Tuesday urged Russia to back UN Security Council action on Syria, after UN officials said the death toll in the months-long Syrian protests had exceeded 5,000. ‘Frankly we think that it is past time for the UN Security Council to speak up, ’State Department spokeswoman Victoria...
ANDY Burnham, the shadow health secretary, met with around 40 representatives of leading NHS organisations on Wednesday night, to discuss Labour policy for the future of the NHS. Burnham urged the reps to support Labour’s ‘stability plan B’ which he said would avoid the need for the Health and Social...
unemployment rose by 128,000 in the three months to October, to 2.64 million people. This is the highest level since 1994, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported yesterday. It revealed that the jobless rate is now 8.3% of the adult population, up from 7.9% in the previous quarter. Youth...
UK unemployment has increased to 2.64m, a rise of 128,000 in the three months to October, the highest level since 1994, with 1,027,000 youth from 16-24 out of work, the highest since records began in 1992. The jobless rate is now 8.3% up from 7.9%. However the unemployment rate...
‘We do not like corruption, because corruption is a programme of the elite in society to steal from the poor,’ said COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, in his address to the COSATU Anti-Corruption March, Polokwane, on Monday. He told the crowd: ‘Let us state the following facts for all and...
150 GMB members employed by Carillion at Great Western NHS Hospital in Swindon are to ballot for strike action over bullying, harassment and discrimination by their management. They work as porters, theatre technicians, in catering and cleaning, and other support roles in the hospital. The 400-bed hospital, run by Swindon...
THE US Congress yesterday froze $700 million of aid to its ally Pakistan until it gets assurances that Pakistan will combat the spread of homemade explosives in the region which are being used to kill NATO forces in Afghanistan. Calls continue to be made in the US for big...