Monthly Archives: August 2013
BAHRAINIS living in Britain are preparing for a wave of protest actions today, to coincide with massive anti-al Khalifa regime demonstrations planned in Bahrain. Bahraini activists say they intend to first hold a protest rally outside the office of the British Prime Minister and then move to the high profile...
THE announcement this week that the coalition government has sanctioned an inflation busting 4.1% increase in rail fares across England has thrown the spotlight once again on the privatisation of the public services, described by one privateer as a ‘licence to print money’ solely for the use of...
RAIL ticket prices will soar by up to 10% next January, in price hikes described by the RMT railworkers union yesterday as ‘the great rail fares robbery’. There were demonstrations of furious commuters and TUC trade unionists outside at least 50 railway stations yesterday, where they condemned the...
FOLLOWING a 100% strike vote, RMT members working on the Serco Barclays so-called ‘Boris bikes’ London cycle scheme began a 48-hour strike on Sunday evening over a range of grievances. All RMT members working for the Serco Barclays Cycle scheme were instructed not to book on for any shifts commencing...
ISRAEL is inviting bids to build over 1,000 settler homes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the housing ministry said on Sunday, ahead of peace talks with the Palestinian. ‘Tenders will be published’ later in the week for 793 units in annexed east Jerusalem and 394 elsewhere in the...
THE shadow minister for immigration, Bryant, yesterday ran away from confronting Tesco and Next over employing migrant workers at reduced wages in place of British workers. Instead, in his speech he made non specific allegations about the use of cheap labour, but paid moving tributes to the two companies, which...
INVOLUNTARY temporary working is soaring in Britain, a labour force survey revealed yesterday, with involuntary temporary workers now outnumbering voluntary temporary workers by two to one. The survey results give the lie to the Coalition’s claims of a ‘recovery’, the TUC said yesterday, ahead of tomorrow’s unemployment figures announcement. The survey...
THE war in Syria poses the greatest threat to US security because of the risk of the government falling and the country becoming a weapons-rich haven for Al-Qaeda, a CIA official says. CIA second-in-command Michael Morell gave the assessment in an interview published Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal as...
RIOT police put down an uprising by immigrants imprisoned at Amygdaleza detention centre, near Athens, who rose up at around 10.00pm on Saturday night. They set on fire mattresses and the cargo containers that are being used as their cells. Fire brigade and riot police were called. Greek police said yesterday that...
WAGES in the UK have seen one of the largest falls in the European Union since the coalition came to power, according to official figures publicised by Labour. Figures from the House of Commons library show average hourly wages have fallen 5.5% since mid-2010, adjusted for inflation, which is the...
BURNHAM, who served as Labour’s health secretary under Gordon Brown and enthusiastically pursued polices to privatise the NHS, cut its budget and bankrupt it with PFI schemes drawn up to enrich the bankers, is now moving to get rid of Labour leader Miliband. Speaking to the Guardian, he warned that...
THE unemployment rate in Greece increased to a record 27.60 per cent in May of 2013, up from 26.90 per cent in April of 2013. Official figures from the Hellenic Statistical Authority in May recorded astronomical youth unemployment, which rose further to 64.9 per cent of 15-24 year olds. Both...
AFTER withdrawing its embassy staff from 20 countries, the US ruling class has now launched a drone blitz on the Yemen, with three drone strikes taking place yesterday morning. It is also organising special forces to intervene in the country. There is no doubt that should a request be made...
FBU (Fire Brigades Union) Leader Matt Wrack wrote on 6th August to Brandon Lewis MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, concerning the fitness standards the employer is seeking to impose and what they will mean for firefighters. The letter reads: ‘I note your disappointment that...
JUST days after Health Secretary Hunt was found to be acting unlawfully with his plan to close the A&E and other facilities at Lewisham Hospital, the coalition, through Prime Minister Cameron, has announced that £500 million is to be put into cutting waiting times in England’s A&Es. It is the...
THE British Medical Association (BMA) and Unison yesterday dismissed as ‘papering over the cracks’, Cameron’s announcement of a £500m ‘bail-out’ over two years for the most hard-pressed A&Es. This came after a number of A&Es were unable to meet maximum 4-hour waiting targets. A BMA spokesman told News Line: ‘It is...
NEW Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has expressed his country’s readiness to engage in ‘serious and substantive talks’ with the West over Iran’s nuclear issue. Rouhani also talked about Syria, possible Iran-USA talks, and various domestic issues on 6th August, at his first press conference after his inauguration. He said: "Domestically, the...
THE new Bank of England governor Carney yesterday in his ‘Inflation Report’ gave big business a sample of his ‘forward guidance’. This amounted to inflation, more inflation and yet more inflation with an assurance to the Banks that since the UK economy is experiencing only a tiny increase in production,...
Two sick Palestinian prisoners have attempted to commit suicide, a lawyer from the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of prisoners affairs said on Tuesday. Hanan al-Khatib said in a ministry statement that Mansour Muqada from Salfit in the central West Bank, and Nahidh al-Aqra from the Gaza Strip, swallowed more than 40...
WHILE claiming that ‘a renewed recovery is now under way in the United Kingdom’, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said yesterday that interest rates will be kept at 0.5% for the foreseeable future. He warned that ‘the legacy of the financial crisis means that the recovery remains weak by...
AUSTRALIA'S Community and Public Sector Union leaders voted on Monday to extend the suspension of all CPSU election campaigning. The union called for an urgent meeting with the Rudd government about the ‘efficiency dividend’ increase, which they estimate will cut up to 5,000 jobs and cause massive delays and backlogs...
THE US State Department has told its citizens and all non-emergency government staff to leave the Yemen ‘immediately’ due to increased threats to their security. This comes in the wake of the sudden closure of 20 US embassies and consulates in the region, proving that in the Middle East and...
THE Unison trade union has welcomed the Cameron-commissioned Berwick Review of patient safety and said that the government should listen to it. Unison said: ‘The government should listen to the strong message in the Review that “fear is toxic”, and stop running down the NHS and start turning the...
THE news that over one million workers now have ‘zero hours contracts’ and work only when their employer wants them, have no holidays or holiday pay and no pension rights, and are often required to relocate at their employer’s demand has shocked the trade union movement. The meaning of this...
GREEK civil servants staged a one-day strike in the Athens area last Friday against the coalition government’s plan to sack some 15,000 ministries workers in August. The government is presenting these barbaric mass sackings as ‘work location transfers’. About 2,000 civil servants besieged the Ministry for Reforms building from 7.00am...
THE Metropolitan Police has apologised to the family of Ian Tomlinson and reached an out-of-court settlement over his ‘unlawful killing’ by a police officer at the G20 protests in London in 2009. The Met apologised ‘unreservedly’ for the ‘excessive and unlawful force’ used by one of its officers. Tomlinson had been...
THE Bank of England has warned that the biggest banks and building societies operating in Britain face a £120bn shortfall in their finances. In a 414-page document, the central bank’s stability watchdog, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), on Friday spelt out the costs of meeting a new diktat from Brussels,...
THE long-serving Palestinian prisoners whom Israel has pledged to release, and whose pledge prepared the way for the Palestinian leader Abbas to reopen the current peace talks, are to be released in four stages by Israel, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said Saturday. In the first stage, 26 prisoners are to...
UNITE, Britain’s biggest union, says urgent action is needed to stop the growth of the zero-hours culture as new figures show the use of these contracts is 25 per cent higher than previously thought. A new report from the ONS (Office for National Statistics) has shown that 250,000 people in...
FORMER Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott has claimed he was against NHS privatisation when he was in government and that he still is. In his Sunday Mirror column yesterday, Prescott said: ‘The Tories claimed the NHS is safe in our hands. ‘Now we know they meant safe in the private...
THE US ruling class has finally worked out its line on the military coup that was carried out in Egypt to overthrow the elected Muslim Brotherhood government, headed by President Mohammed Mursi. US Secretary of State John Kerry has said Egypt’s military was ‘restoring democracy’ when it ousted elected President...
FAST food workers backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New York, St Louis and Kansas City, Missouri have launched strikes demanding both a wage increase to $15 an hour, from $8.94, and the right to join unions without employer interference. Later this week, workers in Chicago, Milwaukee,...
THE Clinicenta private treatment centre at the Lister hospital, Stevenage, is to be brought back into the local NHS trust because of dangerous care and lack of care. The government is to pay £54m to Carillion, the multinational construction company that owns Clinicenta Ltd, to hand back the treatment centre...
DOREEN Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, has asserted that ‘racial profiling’ is being used in immigration police stop-and-check operations. She spoke out after it was revealed that, using the ‘vans of hate’ and their ‘go home or face arrest’ posters, nearly 140 people have been arrested in...
‘A SLAP in the face for Hunt’ is how Unite the union described the victory of the Lewisham Hospital campaigners in the High Court on Wednesday. ‘Today’s High Court ruling quashing Jeremy Hunt’s decision to close A&E and maternity services at Lewisham Hospital is a victory for common sense and...
THE two-day national meeting of postal workers representatives at the union’s Policy Forum this week demonstrated that CWU members have gone way beyond their leadership in their determination to fight privatisation and defeat the government. This was made clear on the first day of the forum when they defied the...
THE Communication Workers Union Policy Forum of over 500 CWU reps in central London yesterday voted unanimously for a national strike ballot of Royal Mail workers unless protections for jobs and services can be secured. They voted for Recommendation 3: ‘That the CWU will prioritise national negotiations along the policy...
The AFL-CIO, along with labour and human rights advocates from around the world have opposed the United States–Colombia Free Trade Agreement, arguing that Colombia is not an appropriate trade agreement partner because of its history of denying workers’ rights. The union pointed to a recent incident at the Colombian air...
A US military judge on Tuesday found former US Army intelligence officer Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, but guilty of five espionage counts, and theft and computer fraud involving leaking 700,000 classified US military documents to WikiLeaks. Manning exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, making...
CHEERS went up outside the High Court when Justice Silber ruled yesterday that Jeremy Hunt’s decision to cut the Accident & Emergency and Maternity Unit services at Lewisham Hospital was unlawful and was quashed. ‘Say Hey Ho! Jeremy Hunt has got to go!’ was the chant when the campaigners welcomed...