Monthly Archives: December 2012
2013 Manifesto – STATEMENT BY THE NEWS LINE EDITORIAL BOARD THE News Line editorial board sends its revolutionary greetings for the year 2013 to the working people and the poor of the world. It is now generally accepted that the world capitalist system is undergoing its greatest-ever crisis. In fact, it is...
‘WHAT Are the Real Reasons of the Western Positions Vis-A-Vis President Al-Assad? Or Why Has President Al-Assad Become an Obsession for the United States?’ asks the Al Thawra Syrian government website in Damascus. It answers: ‘Those who follow the political and diplomatic activity concerning the international crisis in Syria...
MIKE Farrar, the Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, has spoken out for the closing of more hospitals. He also condemned MPs who respond to the feelings of their constituents and lead marches to oppose the closures. Accusing MPs of hypocrisy, he added: ‘Politicians can’t vote to limit the resources...
THE just-released Thatcher papers confirm that the Tory leader had a very real hatred of the NHS and the Welfare State and, along with her Chancellor Geofrey Howe, unveiled a plan in 1982 to dismantle both. British troops entered Port Stanley in June 1982 to conclude the Malvinas War. In September,...
At least 50 people were injured as garment workers clashed with police in Savar on the main road between Dhaka and Aricha in Bangladesh on Monday. Police said when the workers of DNS garment saw closure notices hanging on the factory gate located in the Rajphulbaria area they staged...
HEALTH regulator Monitor has authorised West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust as a new foundation trust, effectively privatising it from 1st January, 2013. The trust will now benefit from a variety of new freedoms from government control. It will be able to take decisions to fundamentally alter the service. It will be...
HAVING failed to overthrow President Assad of Syria by force of arms, the imperialist powers are now turning to Russia, and are seeking the support of President Putin for a diplomatic deal to force Assad out of office. Assad is to be replaced by what is being termed a ‘transitional...
THE Trafford strategic programme board has announced its support for closing the A&E at Trafford General Hospital, the hospital from which Nye Bevan launched the NHS in 1948. Also planned to go are emergency surgery, most in-patient surgery, the intensive care unit, and the paediatric observation and assessment...
THE US labour movement is now bracing itself for a last minute ‘deal’ on the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ with the Republican Party, in which the burden of the gigantic US debt will be placed on the backs of the US working class and the poor. On December 21 the AFL-CIO trade...
THE US Think-Progress website has published the text of the ‘60 Minutes’ TV interview with former CIA official Tyler Drumheller who revealed that in October 2002 a very highly placed Iraqi government official revealed that Iraq had no wmds and that Bush, Cheney, and Rice were personally...
A PETTY incident – the refusal of Downing Street police officers to allow the Tory chief whip to ride his bicycle through the gates of Downing Street – has developed into a major crisis between the Tory Party and the body of armed men, the Metropolitan Police, whose job...
THE Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service (MPTS) investigating the fitness to practice of the doctor who was responsible for the welfare of Baha Mousa at the time of his death in British custody in Iraq, has announced that Dr Derek Keilloh is not fit to practice and has had his...
THE number of people who turn to foodbanks over the Christmas fortnight is expected to double, with the economic crisis driving more households below the poverty line, a charity has warned. The Trussell Trust, which provides three days’ worth of emergency food to people in the UK who are at...
THE Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) yesterday struck off the medical register former British Army doctor Dr Derek Keilloh after his misconduct over the death of Iraqi detainee Baha Mousa in 2003. He will not be allowed to practice as a doctor for at least five years and will be...
ABOUT 5,000 public sector workers took part in two strike marches in Athens last Wednesday against mass sackings and wage cuts. The one-day national strike was called by ADEDY, the public workers’ trades unions federation. About 2,000 local government, hospital, teachers and social security workers participated in the ADEDY march...
THE COALITION government’s policy to ‘ring-fence’ the banks is at best a cosmetic attempt to appear to be trying to protect retail banking, and small businesses and savers, from being bankrupted by the speculation of the big bank parasites. However, this speculation constitutes the essence of banking in the epoch...
CIVIL servants’ union PCS yesterday joined the National Union of Teachers in raising serious concerns about the politicisation of education. Commenting on concerns raised by the National Union of Teachers (see Page 3) about potential conflicts of interest among education advisers, PCS union general secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘The results...
AS the economic crisis continues to tear Greece apart and drives forward a revolutionary surge amongst workers and youth, so it is driving the Greek bourgeoisie, with the active connivance of their European capitalist masters, to dump bourgeois democracy in favour of outright and brutal dictatorship. To this end, the...
The lawyer George Bizos, who represents the families of the 34 Lonmin miners shot dead by the South African police, has said the police attempt to arrest more than 3,000 striking Marikana miners was ‘crazy’ and ‘unprecedented’. He insisted that the police had planned to shoot miners on August 16...
PM Cameron has told MPs that 3,800 British troops – almost half of the current force serving in Helmand province – are to be withdrawn from Afghanistan next year. Troop numbers are already being reduced from 9,500 to 9,000 before Christmas. And numbers would fall to about 5,200 by the...
ROYAL Mail managers replaced 100 striking postal workers with 250 managers to cover last week’s strike . . . yet still refuse to settle a dispute over workload in Bristol. Despite talks with ACAS, CWU members in Bristol took a second day’s strike action yesterday over various issues, including deliveries,...
PM Cameron has announced that 3,800 British troops are to be withdrawn from Afghanistan next year. Troop numbers are being cut from 9,500 to 9,000 before Christmas, but Cameron told MPs at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday that that number will be down to 5,200 by the end of 2013...
UK CPI consumer price inflation remained unchanged at 2.7% in November, according to official data, despite the fact that there were big rises in food prices, with bread prices jumping in a series of 10p leaps. The biggest price rises were seen in the cost of fruit, bread and...
HARMONI, the out-of-hours GP services privateer, is often so short-staffed that it is unsafe. Managers regularly send out desperate texts to doctors and nurses begging them to come in to cover unfilled shifts at the last minute, according to allegations made by senior doctors. ‘It is appalling. It is...
THE Special Trust Administrator’s plan for South London Healthcare Trust (SLHT ) and the NHS in South East London, aims to close Lewisham hospital as an acute District General Hospital (DGH). The plan is to strip out A&E, acute medical and surgical admissions, inpatient paediatrics and probably obstetrics, and...
Yesterday’s report by the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group (FPAG) that 300,000 households will be plunged into fuel poverty by Christmas is not just a scandal but an absolute crime against workers and the poor. Fuel poverty is officially defined by the government as when a household spends more than 10% of...
A SERIES of protests have been organised outside the British Prime Minister’s Office in 10 Downing Street, since last Monday to condemn the repression of the Jaffna University students by the occupying Sinhala military. Condemning the arrests and detentions of the students, and the Sinhala military’s systematic assaults on...
The NHS Commissioning Board will announce compulsory seven-day working in the NHS when it publishes its ‘planning guidance’ for the NHS for the first time today. The Tory-LibDem Coalition has said it ‘fully supports’ a seven-day service, but the BMA insisted: ‘The NHS is not Tesco’. The NHS Commissioning Board has...
The Sunday Mirror/ComRes survey of 2,002 voters has rattled the cages of the major political parties. It shows that Labour is leading with the support of 39 per cent of those polled, four points lower than the last poll, and under the percentage needed to form a majority government. It also...
BY ADRI NIEUWHOF ISRAEL has held six Palestinian boys from Nablus in solitary confinement in al-Jalame detention centre near Haifa, writes Defence for Children International-Palestine Section in an urgent appeal. The boys have spent on average 14.5 days in solitary confinement, ranging from four to 29 days. Following their detention in...
THE Children’s Society is warning that 1.2 million children living below the poverty line in England miss out on a school meal each day. Some students turning up to school hungry have been seen trying to steal food says the society. The warning follows on from the Child Poverty Action Group’s...
LABOUR Party leader Miliband spoke yesterday on Labour’s ‘One Nation’ approach to cultural diversity and integration insisting that admission to this select body is for English speakers only. After a ritual embrace of ‘toleration’, a lot of treacle about the Olympics, and some trailing of his family’s...
LABOUR leaders at Palestinian refugee camps on Tuesday shut down all UNRWA sub-offices in the West Bank in protest at the dismissal of 130 employees and reductions of services. Munthir Amira, director of the youth centre of Aida refugee camp, said that ‘it is time that UNRWA’s administration realise that...
THE Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir John Lyons, has opened an inquiry into expense claims by the Culture Secretary Maria Miller. This follows a complaint about her claims submitted by Labour MP John Mann on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Commissioner confirmed yesterday: ‘It has been accepted for inquiry. There is...
GREEK local government along with college and university administrative workers are continuing with occupations, strikes and demonstrations against the government’s mass sackings plans. On Wednesday, the trades unions confederation of local government workers POE-OTA organised demonstrations in Athens and in all major Greek cities. They were joined by civil...
THE Education Secretary Michael Gove has urged school governors and heads that teachers who work to rule are in breach of contract and should have their pay deducted. In a letter to head teachers, Gove describes teachers working to rule as ‘highly irresponsible’. He is determined to privatise education, through pushing...
PRESIDENT Barack Obama proclaimed Syria’s newly reorganised opposition as the ‘legitimate’ representative of the nation’s people on Tuesday, in the most significant US intervention in a brutal imperialist-imposed war. As Washington cranked up pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration also blacklisted the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, which...
THIS week has seen the essence of the banking fraternity emerge after HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, which was rescued by the UK taxpayers in 2008 as the sub-prime mortgage crisis threatened to destroy it, was fined a record £1.2 billion by the US authorities for money-laundering activities carried out...
THE draft communications data bill is a serious attack on the privacy of citizen’s electronic data and will severely restrict the freedom of the press – says the NUJ. The NUJ added its opposition to the draft communications data bill – otherwise known as the snoopers’ charter – as a...
‘YET another British government has engineered the repression of the truth behind the murder of my husband Pat Finucane.’ This was the response of Geraldine Finucane to yesterday’s report into her husband’s murder by British state agents. The report admitted that state agents murdered and killed in the north, but ...
RAIL fares have risen three times faster than wages since the slump began in 2008, according to a new analysis published yesterday by the TUC’s Action for Rail campaign. Between 2008 and 2012 average rail fares increased by 26.6 per cent, while average wages rose by just 9.6 per cent...
AT ONE TIME the ‘enemy within’ was well defined as being the working class, especially its militant trade unionists and Trotskyists. Now capitalism is in such a deep crisis and the ruling class feels so insecure in the saddle that the whole nation, minus the relative handful of bosses,...
High profile figures from the arts have joined with the National Union of Teachers in condemning the Coalition’s planned secondary school Key Stage 4 examination changes. The NUT included statements from leading arts figures as part of its response to the Department for Education’s ‘consultation process’ on Monday. Leading playwright David...
THE announcement by the unelected Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, that he is quitting the job sent the Italian economy into a massive crisis that has quickly spread throughout the eurozone. Monti is an EU economic ‘technocrat’ who was parachuted into the job by the eurozone leaders after the existing prime...