Monthly Archives: April 2013
THE London School of Economics has demanded the BBC withdraw tonight’s Panorama programme attacking North Korea and describing it as a fascist state. Complaining of ‘serious damage’ to its reputation, the LSE said Panorama reporter John Sweeney posed as one of its PhD students on a university society trip in...
EVERYWHERE, from the motor car industry to the mines of Appalacia, the US working class is struggling for its jobs and its trade union and democratic rights, with right to work (for low pay) laws and other union-busting legislation being pushed through in a number of US states. However,...
UNISON has called on the Public Accounts Committee and the Assembly Health Committee to investigate the startling growth of private medicine funded out of the health service budget in the north of Ireland. This disturbing trend can be directly traced to the appointment of Edwin Poots as Health Minister. Last week’s...
WORKERS in England’s Northern region are up to £4,264 worse off per year since the Tory-led coalition came to power. The Northern TUC 10-Point Plan for A Northern Future that Works manifesto being launched today shows that since the coalition government was formed the average full-time wage has fallen significantly...
THE hysterical propaganda that North Korea is run by a young madman, who is about to press a button to attack the US mainland and its allies and destroy the planet, can only be believed by the simple-minded, as can Cameron’s plea that Britain has to have the Trident...
THE US government must prove that army private Bradley Manning knowingly helped Al-Qaeda and other ‘American foes’ by handing over secret documents to WikiLeaks, a judge ruled on Wednesday. An order made by Judge Denise Lind at a preliminary hearing, raises the bar for convicting Manning of ‘aiding the enemy’,...
THE News Line calls for a massive lobby of the next meeting of the TUC General Council on Wednesday 24th April, to demand the TUC immediately call an all-out, indefinite general strike to bring down the government. At this meeting, a paper is due to be submitted from the Unite...
The Federation of Greek Seafarers Trades Union PNO have called a 24-hour strike for 16 April on all ferries, passenger and cargo ships, against a government Bill for the ‘restructuring of the Commercial Naval Affairs Ministry’. The PNO says that the Bill would lead to mass sackings, huge wage cuts...
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde has warned that the worldwide financial crisis is deepening and more threatening than ever. In a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday she advocated the closing down of failing banks. She said: ‘We simply cannot have pre-crisis banking in a post-crisis...
LEADER of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) Alexis Tsipras has warned that the Troika ‘maybe wants to abolish democracy’. Speaking at a railway workers’ trade union meeting on Monday, Tsipras said that the planned privatisation of the Greek Railways Organisation (OSE) by the government on the orders of...
THATCHER’S state funeral on April 17, is to be a Tory state provocation of the working class. Her coffin is to be carried through the streets of London by 700 troops from units associated with the Malvinas (Falklands) war. The great leader is so popular that the skies above her coffin...
THE start of an Afghan-led peace deal with the Taleban is needed to secure the future of Afghanistan after British troops leave, a group of MPs has said. This can be understood as meaning that unless a peace deal is made with the Taleban now, then ‘we’...
‘THOUSANDS of firefighters face the sack’ as a result of the Public Sector Pensions Bill, which imposes a normal pension age (NPA) of 60 on firefighters, the Fire Brigades Union is warning. The FBU says that the government’s own report, which was published earlier this year, ‘shows that most firefighters...
MARGARET Thatcher was ignored by the bourgeoisie for 23 years after she was put out of office by the Tory leadership in 1990. This was when her disastrous attempt to bring in a Poll Tax started a revolt on the scale of the original 1381 insurrection. She has...
The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) last Thursday agreed to oppose and campaign against the incoming property tax. On the final day of their annual conference, TUI delegates overwhelmingly agreed to oppose the contentious property tax. In recent weeks, homeowners across the country have received correspondence from revenue instructing them...
Thousands of HM Revenue and Customs members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) took part in a half-day strike yesterday, coinciding with the start of the new tax year. The PCS began a three-month campaign of strike action in defence of pay, jobs and conditions on 20 March...
Yesterday saw the introduction of changes to the benefits available to the disabled that will leave hundreds of thousands facing cuts of between £20.55 a week rising to a staggering £131.50 a week for some of the most vulnerable. The change from the existing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal...
EGYPT National Railway director Hussein Zakariya said he has taken legal action against striking train drivers, referring them to the Administrative Prosecution. He said in statements on Sunday, reported by state-run news agency MENA, that the “instigators” behind the strike would also be referred to the Public Prosecution. Train movement across...
CALLS by the head of NHS Clinical Commissioners for most hospitals to be ‘downsized’ or closed and for 50 per cent of current hospital care to be done ‘in the community’ in future, were condemned by Unite yesterday. Rachael Maskell, Unite Head of Health, told News Line: ‘They are removing...
OVER two hundred workers, trade unionists and youth attended the News Line-North East London Council of Action Special Conference to defend our hospitals and the Welfare State, in Enfield, north London on Saturday. The Main Resolution opened: ‘This government has declared war on the working class, the pensioners, the...
TWELVE Afghan civilians – ten children and two women – and one NATO soldier have been killed in an operation carried out by US-led International Security Assistant Force (ISAF)ISAF forces in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Kunar, local witnesses said yesterday. A further six women were injured in the incident in...
PUBLIC and Commercial Services Union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka confirmed yesterday that the PCS is in talks with other trade unions on holding a general strike against the coalition’s austerity cuts. The PCS has already staged walkouts as part of a three-month campaign of industrial action over pay, jobs...
TORY leader Cameron has backed Chancellor George Osborne after he suggested a link between the Mick Philpott case and the Welfare State. The prime minister told the BBC that living on benefits should not be a ‘lifestyle choice’. Cameron and Osborne are seeking to suggest not only that welfare leads...
THE farcically misnamed Banking Standards Commission (as if the banks had any standards) was created to try and prevent an even bigger banking collapse taking place than that which began in 2008, and is still continuing. It has recommended that former HBOS bosses Sir James Crosby, Andy Hornby and...
GREEK seafarers along with dockers and all other ports workers staged a solid 24-hour national strike last Wednesday against two separate government Bills to further slash wages and privatise ports. Railway workers are also on 8-hour daily stoppages against privatisation. Early on Wednesday morning, seafarers staged mass pickets in...
HAMAS yesterday urged the United Nations to reconsider its suspension of food aid for Palestinian refugees, imposed after protesters stormed a UN depot in Gaza demonstrating against aid cuts. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) stopped food deliveries after dozens of Gazans forced their way into the field office...
THE demand for a general strike to bring down the government has been driven by the working class onto the immediate agenda of the TUC, and it is having great difficulty in getting rid of it. A document prepared by Unite, the biggest union in the country with 1.4...
THERE was consternation yesterday when a leaked Unite document revealed that a union report going before the TUC General Council on April 24 is calling for a 24-hour political general strike against the coalition. The Tories took fright as the news broke that the Unite union is pressing for a...
THE International Monetary Fund has delivered a brutal assessment of Ireland’s economic situation, complaining of a lack of progress by banks, and dangers of the country’s debt becoming unsustainable if growth forecasts are missed. The IMF has criticised Irish banks for ‘inadequate progress’ in dealing with non-performing loans, stating that...
WHERE crime ends and business starts and vice versa has always been seen as a blurred grey area which always remains, whatever the scandals that rock the ruling class. The Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services team at Ernst & Young has released new research revealing that the total fines...
ISRAEL has set Palestine ablaze yet again with the death in an Israeli prison of Maysarah Abu Hamdiyeh, a 64-year-old prisoner, who had been suffering from throat cancer in an Israeli jail where he was denied the required medical attention. There have already been a series of Israeli air attacks...
THE death of a cancer-stricken detainee on Tuesday has raised tensions in Israeli jails as Palestinian prisoners announced a three-day hunger strike. Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Fatah leader from Hebron who was detained in 2002 and sentenced to life, died in an Israeli hospital on Tuesday from throat cancer which...
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has set out the ultra-harsh terms of the ‘bailout deal’ that the Cypriot government has agreed. In order to receive a 10bn-euro (£8.5bn; $12.8bn) ‘bailout’ next month, it will have to carry out measures against the 800,000 Cypriots that the IMF describes as ...
THOUSANDS of investors have launched a joint compensation claim for more than £4.0bn against Royal Bank of Scotland, claiming the 82% state-owned bank deliberately misled shareholders into believing it was in good financial health, just before it collapsed in 2008. More than 12,000 private shareholders and 100 institutional investors have...
PALESTINIANS rallied across the West Bank and in Gaza on Saturday to commemorate Land Day. March 30 is commemorated every year because of a deadly incident on that day in 1976 in which Israeli troops killed six Palestinians during a protest against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands. The biggest...
HUNDREDS of US cities are going bust, either destroyed by the banking and property collapse or by the crisis of the major US industries. The city bosses are choosing between two roads to resolve the crisis. One, as in the Californian city of Stockton, is to declare bankruptcy, and impose...
the Health and Social Care Act, which came into force yesterday, ‘is the privatisation of the National Health Service and must be defeated through class action, a general strike, to remove this government,’ leading BMA member Anna Athow said yesterday. Under the Act, the responsibility of the Secretary of State...
IN his recent budget speech Chancellor Osborne stated his objective is: ‘Building a modern reformed state we can afford.’ The truth of the matter is that modern capitalist Britain cannot afford anything at all for the working class and the middle class, except poverty. Osborne went on to shed light on...
A YOUGOV survey of 2,008 parents commissioned by the NUT shows that the vast majority are opposed to the government and its privatisation of education. After almost three years in power only eight per cent of parents believe that the government has made a positive impact on the education system. After...
LOW income households will have their family finances hit by multiple cuts this month totalling £2.3bn. Almost half of this amount will be provided by the Bedroom Tax (£490m) and the devolved Council budgets being cut by 10% (£483m). Local housing allowance annual uprate at CPI (instead of RPI) will cut...
THE NASUWT and NUT teachers’ unions’ annual conferences at the weekend voted to resist the spread of academies and free schools. Both conferences carried votes of no confidence in Education Secretary Gove and Ofsted chief Wilshaw. In Bournemouth, the NASUWT conference voted to continue to work with local communities to ‘oppose...
TODAY is the day when the outrageous Bedroom Tax begins and hundreds of thousands of working people will see between 14% and 25% of their housing benefit slashed while their rent remains the same. Those who cannot or will not pay the tax face being evicted and turned...
TEN students were killed and others were injured by a mortar shell fired by terrorists which fell inside the cafeteria of the Faculty of Architectural Engineering in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Thursday. The Rector of the University of Damascus, Mohammad Amer al-Mardini, said that ten students were martyred and...