Monthly Archives: May 2013
THE Irish trade union leaders are currently deciding whether to accept state control of their public sector trade unions, including control over wages, conditions and even the length of the working day, or fight the attempt to impose a dictatorship of the bankers imposed by the Fine Gael-...
THE Syrian army has scored ‘major victories’ against ‘rebels’ and now holds ‘the balance of power’ in the conflict, President Bashar al-Assad told a Lebanese TV station yesterday. In an interview with Hezbollah-linked Al Manar TV, Assad also said: ‘Syria has received the first shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S-300 rockets....
THE news that the Obama regime is demanding the complete withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters from Syria marks a decisive development in the increasingly desperate drive by US imperialism, with the support of Britain and France, to secure regime change in Syria no matter what the cost. With their allies, the...
Europe’s economic crisis ‘could evolve into stagnation, with negative implications for the global economy’, the OECD warned yesterday. The 34-nation Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development once again cut its growth forecast for the eurozone and called on the European Central Bank to consider Quantitative Easing. The organisation’s chief economist,...
Strikes by workers at museums and galleries across the country today kick off a long weekend of action against government cuts. The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said yesterday that these strikes form part of a three-month civil service-wide campaign against Coalition-imposed cuts to pay, pensions, jobs and working...
THE German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned a Paris conference of French, German and Italian leaders on Tuesday that youth unemployment of almost 25% throughout the EU (double the adult rate) threatened the continent with the end of the European Union and with revolution. Schaeuble for good measure added that...
INFORMATION Minister, Omran al-Zoubi, stressed on Monday that the regional US-Israeli scheme in Syria ‘is in the last throes and it has clinically been terminated.’ During a reception held by Top News Network under the title ‘the Day of the Two Victories’ at Dama Rose Hotel in Damascus, Minister...
SEVEN departments of government, the Ministry of Justice, Department for Communities and Local Government, Department for Energy and Climate Change, HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and The Northern Ireland department have agreed to 10% cuts for the year 2015. This means that tens of thousands...
Unions and children’s charities yesterday condemned Work and Pensions Secretary Duncan Smith’s offer to raid the Welfare Budget by another £3 billion a year to hand the money over to the Armed Forces and Police. They also hit out at Chancellor Osborne’s announcement that he is planning another £11.5bn of...
‘Qatar is acting like a 21st century slave state’, delegates attending the UEFA Congress in London heard. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) are backing calls for FIFA to re-run the vote for the 2022 tournament should the Qatari government refuse...
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says Russia is going ahead with deliveries of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian army. The arms will help deter foreign intervention, following Monday’s confirmation that the EU embargo on supplying arms to the terrorist ‘rebels’ is to be lifted said Ryabkov. He added: ‘We...
BRITISH Foreign Secretary Hague yesterday tried to get the EU to lift its arms embargo on the Syrian terrorist ‘rebels’ and to stoke up war against the Syrian regime. European Union foreign ministers were meeting yesterday in Brussels to discuss the British and French calls for sanctions on the supply...
APART from the bankers and speculators, there is another group looking to make huge profits at the expense of the human misery being created by the capitalist crisis – the bailiffs. While the bankers are reaping huge amounts from the savage cuts being made by the Tory-led coalition in an...
FAMILIES failing to pay their rent because of the ‘bedroom tax’ are already being threatened with eviction, just weeks after it came into force. Thousands of people are at risk of losing their homes as councils and housing associations clamp down on those in rent arrears. Data from 107 local authorities...
THE missile attacks on Sunday on the suburbs of Beirut are only a warning to Hezbollah, the commander of the imperialist-backed ‘rebel’ Free Syrian Army group said on Sunday. Speaking to the Lebanese satellite TV channel LBC, Ammar al-Wawi warned of the consequences of Hezbollah’s decision to fight alongside the...
THE families of Iraqi civilians killed and tortured by British troops during the US-UK 2003 war and occupation have won a legal battle to get public hearings into the deaths and inhuman treatment of their loved ones. Their lawyers, Public Interest Lawyers, said in a statement on Friday: ‘The High...
ATHENS – Greek state officials delivered shocking reports on the treatment of immigrant children held in jails, at a meeting last Friday of the Committee for Equality, Youth and Human Rights of the Vouli (Greek parliament). The General Secretary of the Justice Ministry Y. Sourlas stated that, ‘Today there are...
THE Tories are considering capping visits to GPs, that is limiting the number of times in a year that a patient can see their GP. Tory activists have been asked whether capping GP visits is an election winner. A consultation document, for long-standing members, Local Health Discussion Brief posted on...
HOME Secretary Theresa May said yesterday that thousands of people are potentially at risk of being radicalised in the UK. May, when asked if she would push ahead with a Communications Data Bill, said: ‘The law enforcement agencies, the intelligence agencies, need access to communications...
THE families of Iraqi civilians killed and tortured by British troops, yesterday won their legal battle for public hearings. Their lawyers, Public Interest Lawyers, announced yesterday morning: ‘The High Court (Sir John Thomas, President, Queen’s Bench Division and Mister Justice Silber) has today handed down a judgment dealing with the...
GPs at the BMA Local Medical Committees annual conference in London yesterday debated motions in relation to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his policies. They voted for motion 801 that ‘GPs are the patient’s champions’ and that ‘NHS staff are working harder than ever before’. 801 added that government targets and...
GPs meeting in London on Thursday reacted angrily to the government’s cuts and drive to privatise, and press and government propaganda blaming GPs for all the ills of the NHS. The first motion to be heard at the BMA Conference of Representatives of Local Medical Committees, stressed that general practice...
OBAMA, in his speech on Thursday at Fort McNair, presented himself as a president eager to end the foreign wars of the USA, and substitute for it a combination of ‘drone warfare’, ‘aid’ and diplomacy to fight an enemy that is at home and abroad. He announced the ‘new warfare’...
THE sharp rises followed almost immediately by even bigger losses on the international stock markets over the past few days, point in only one direction – a spiral movement downwards of a completely out-of-control world capitalist system, towards a new and even deeper crash of the system. The world stock...
‘Experience to date of the transition from NHS Direct to the NHS 111 service 24. The Unite experience of the 111 service is that it has been a disaster. It is an example of exactly how the NHS is being fragmented and damaged by the government’s ideological obsession with markets and...
THE Chair of the BMA’s GP committee, Dr Laurence Buckman, told the Conference of Local Medical Committees yesterday: ‘A signal has been passed at danger – the NHS is under real threat.’ He said to repeated applause: ‘All of us but the politicians can see the buffers fast approaching. When...
THERE was a powerful picket on Wembley High Street yesterday morning as 150 teachers and 80 non-teaching staff went on strike at Copland Community School in Brent, north-west London, against forced Academisation. Teachers and other school workers were joined by students and parents on the picket line, chanting: ‘Pupils...
AROUND 100 students from London universities and their supporters, marched from University of London Union (ULU) and lobbied a meeting of university management against plans to close ULU and its political activities. A delegation from the Young Socialists Students Society won support for their slogan: ‘No cuts no closures occupy...
YOUTH in Stockholm have risen up in anger over the last three days and faced police attacks and racist abuse, following the police shooting and killing of an elderly man earlier this month. Swedish police arrested eight in the Stockholm suburb of Husby on Tuesday night as young people set...
WHEN the leaders of the Coalition are forced to pledge publicly that it will go the distance and will not split apart, the writing is truly on the wall for them, and by implication for the bosses and bankers that stand behind them. Yesterday, LibDem leader Nick Clegg said:...
RMT members at Northern Rail have voted for strike action against sackings and casualisation.’ In a statement the RMT said: ‘Northern Rail management have run a cynical campaign throughout the balloting period attempting to bully staff through a series of attacks on RMT union officials and a barrage of totally...
‘Today’s positive results are more compelling evidence of why Royal Mail should be kept in the public sector,’ CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward, said yesterday. He was responding to Royal Mail’s results which showed profits almost doubling for the year 2012-2013, rising from £153 million to £403 million, with...
ON MONDAY evening, Labour Party leader Miliband completely betrayed the interests of the working class, the youth and the majority of the middle class when he rescued the Tory Party from ignominious defeat at the hands of its discontented rebels, a defeat that could have brought the coalition down...
LOCKED-OUT Travel Safe workers demonstrated yesterday morning outside the headquarters of London Overground Rail Operations Ltd (just outside Swiss Cottage tube station) against their ‘appalling working conditions’. They are demonstrating every day at 12.30pm. The Travel Safe workers are members of the RMT and employed on a Transport for London...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has re-affirmed he will not step down, in an interview with Argentina’s Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency. President al-Assad was asked: ‘How do you see the conference proposed at the end of this month in light of the initial agreement between the USA and...
At their annual conference the largest head teachers union, NAHT, passed a motion of no-confidence in the Tory education minister Michael Gove and the whole government policy on education. Gove, who was present for a question and answer session with delegates, was also on the receiving end of a bruising encounter...
POLICE take a DNA sample from a child every ten minutes in England and Wales, figures obtained by the Howard League for Penal Reform reveal today. New research by the charity has found that officers took swabs from almost 54,000 boys and girls aged 17 or under during 2011. They included...
LORD Howe, who is credited with bringing Thatcher down, now seems to be about to perform the same service for PM David Cameron, with a little help from outgoing Bank of England Governor King. Howe told the Observer that Tory leaders are ‘running scared’ of Tory MPs by offering to...
UP TO 20,000 doctors, nurses, other health workers, trade unionists, older workers, students and youth marched on Downing Street on Saturday afternoon, angrily demonstrating in defence of the NHS against the Tory-LibDem Coalition government’s attacks. There were hundreds of banners, placards and flags, including the North East London Council of...
THE Fire Brigades Union yesterday angrily condemned the government-commissioned Knight Review of the fire service. Ex-Chief Fire Officer Ken Knight recommends privatisation and mergers, suggesting – like Scotland – a single fire service for England. He warned: ‘There will be an adjustment of numbers, of jobs, of people. The service itself...
FIREFIGHTERS at their conference yesterday decided to put a seven-point pensions plan to ministers and seek new talks to try to avoid strike action over the massive changes the coalition has planned for their pensions. The FBU said yesterday: ‘The proposed changes are unworkable and not fit for purpose, the...
HUNDREDS of thousands rallied in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday in response to a call by several Egyptian political forces for a series of protests in support of an anti-Mursi petition drive — Tamarod, or ‘Rebellion’ campaign. The ‘million-man rally’ kicked off the campaign with the aim of decrying the...
THE confrontation between Greek teachers and the Greek state and its EU masters has erupted this week after all teachers were served at the weekend with ‘civil mobilisation’ papers, signed and stamped by an army brigadier. Declaring a state of emergency in the education system, teachers have been subject to...
Thousands marched in Gaza to mark the 65th Nakba anniversary demanding faction leaders in Gaza call for unifying the Palestinian political leadership as a top priority. For Palestinians and Arabs, May 14, 1948 marks a day of rage they call al-Naqba, Arabic for ‘the Catastrophe’. More than 760,000 Palestinians – estimated...