Monthly Archives: November 2013
THE BIG push is on to destroy the national network of A&Es that millions of people depend on, and to convert at least 100 to a version of ‘urgent care centres’. This project of NHS boss Keogh is even being advertised proudly as creating a ‘two-tier NHS’, a Premier division...
HALF of the English regions have cut their spending on maternity services despite the ongoing baby boom, according to new figures obtained by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM). Other figures also show that only one English region meets the recommended minimum staffing level for midwives. The figures came out yesterday,...
FIREFIGHTERS in England and Wales are holding a fourth strike on pensions today between 10.00am and 2.00pm. This follows the decision of the government in Westminster to worsen proposals on firefighter pensions. Lucy Masoud, FBU Rep Chelsea Fire Station, White Watch, told News Line on Monday: ‘When I joined the Fire...
‘TODAY the biggest challenge we face is economic,’ Cameron told his audience of City of London bosses on Monday night at the Lord Mayor’s no expense spared banquet. He added, unveiling the crisis of British imperialism, ‘Of course, Britain has recovered from recessions and financial crashes before. But this time...
UNIVERSITY staff across the UK will walk out for a second day of strike action on Tuesday December 3rd, trade unions representing university staff announced yesterday. The three unions – Unison, Unite and the University and College Union (UCU) – that took strike action on Thursday 31 October confirmed...
IT was no accident that last Thursday’s storming of the Greek state broadcasting (ERT) building by riot police and the brutal eviction of the occupying workers coincided with the arrival in Athens of representatives of the EC-IMF-ECB troika. The troika had come to dictate to the right-wing coalition government of...
THERE will be ‘no retreat’ over defence of ‘the legitimate right to protest,’ Unite leader Len McCluskey told 1,200 delegates assembled at the union’s industrial section conference in Brighton yesterday. ‘Today, we meet in the middle of a vast media witch-hunt against our union, reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s,’...
‘NO CUTS to Cleaners Pay! Our cleaners deserve a living wage, not poverty pay!’ demanded angry cleaners at the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London(CoNEL) as they demonstrated last Friday against a 23% pay cut. They were joined by UCU lecturers, GMB members and other supporters as they...
A VERY nervous House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has just asked the Bank of England to clarify its role in ensuring that the coalition government’s Help to Buy mortgage purchasing scheme does not lead to an even bigger property bubble than the one that burst so disastrously in...
THOUSANDS of workers and students rally every evening to the ERT building (State TV and Radio corporation) in an Athens suburb demanding the withdrawal of the riot police who stormed the workers’ occupation last Thursday morning. ERT journalists and technicians organise every evening a 9 o’clock news television programme which...
A DRAMATIC one in three hospitals face closure, the Nuffield Trust has warned MPs. Many hospital trusts face severe and potentially unsustainable financial pressures, warns a Nuffield Trust submission to the House of Commons Health Select Committee. The think tank draws together official figures to show that these pressures are concentrated...
THE SYRIAN army is now having great successes against the pro-US and Islamic forces that have been seeking to destroy Syria and divide it amongst themselves, including the establishment of an Al-Qaeda-dominated state in the north, bordering Iraq and Turkey. Syrian troops have liberated urban areas in the Damascus countryside...
SYRIAN army forces have made considerable gains in their battle against foreign-backed militants around the capital, Damascus, retaking a key ‘rebel’-held town. The government forces regained control of Sbeineh, south of Damascus, and drove out militants from the town last Thursday, Syria state television said. The broadcaster said: ‘Our brave army...
MPs have blasted the Tory coalition government’s proposal to force landlords to do immigration checks on their tenants, warning that it will lead to a ‘bonanza for unscrupulous landlords’. The committee also warns that landlords will use the new power contained in the Immigration Bill to discriminate against all immigrants;...
CIVIL servants union PCS has slammed the increase in benefit sanctions on the unemployed, that average at 64,307 per month, as ‘truly shocking’. PCS added that this leads directly to ‘an increase of people being forced to use food banks and loan sharks.’ Disabled people have been hit hard by the...
THE results from the first forensic tests to be carried out on the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have confirmed the universally held belief that his death in November 2004 was caused by poisoning. According to Swiss scientists, working on samples taken from Arafat’s corpse, these show unexpectedly high...
AT 4.15 local time yesterday morning, hundreds of riot police forcibly entered the building of the ERT (state TV and radio corporation) which has been occupied by its journalists, technicians and administrative workers since 11 June. This followed a decision of the Greek coalition government to shut it down and...
ANGRY GMB members are demonstrating outside the CoNEL College in Tottenham this morning against an ‘utterly shameful’ attack on college cleaners which cuts their pay by 23%. GMB demand a London living wage for the cleaners of £8.55 per hour. The GMB said: ‘Contractors Ocean say they must cut working...
JUST how ruthlessly Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is conducting the ruling class’ war on the poor can be seen in the changes he has made in the way that the Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) can be slashed, and the results of these changes. His new regulations introduced...
Israel has told the Palestinians to forget the 1967 boarders and accept the Separation Wall that cuts through West Bank as the border of a future Palestinian state. Israeli negotiators made this announcement just hours before US Secretary of State John Kerry’s arrival for top-level talks on ongoing direct...
WORKERS yesterday condemned the shutting down of shipbuilding after the slashing of 2,000 jobs in Portsmouth and Glasgow. BAE Systems, the defence privateer, said 940 staff posts and 170 agency workers are to be sacked at the Portsmouth site, and 835 at yards in Govan and Scotstoun...
THE Judicial Review Hearing into the decision to close the Accident and Emergency Department at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield continued in the High Court yesterday morning. Counsel for Enfield Council Andrew Arden QC, referred to the NHS Finance Manual. He said that it noted that NHS Trusts have...
Medical, military, and ethics experts say US health professionals designed and participated in cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and torture of detainees, the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) said yesterday. An independent panel of military, ethics, medical, public health, and legal experts on Monday charged that US military...
LABOUR leader Miliband yesterday lashed out at the payday lenders and the way that these vulture capitalists are preying on the poor, making life impossible for ordinary people. He asked: ‘as I listened to these stories, my overwhelming thought was: how is this being allowed to happen in Britain, 2013? ‘Because...
THE Judicial Review into the closure of Chase Farm’s Hospital A&E began yesterday morning. Enfield council is seeking the quashing of the closure decision. Andrew Arden QC for Enfield council said that the council wasn’t contesting the closure of Chase Farm Maternity and Paediatrics just...
US Secretary of State, John Kerry says that there are indications Egypt generals intend to restore democracy. He says that the USA is committed to working with Egypt’s interim rulers. Kerry said on Sunday that Egypt’s generals intend to restore democracy, after an army takeover that prompted Washington to freeze...
Two reports this week bring home that the reality facing millions of workers and their families under this rotten, bankrupt British capitalist system is one of hunger and homelessness. According to the housing charity Shelter, over 80,000 children will be spending this Christmas without a home and living in ‘shocking...
STAFF working for the probation service in England and Wales are walking out of their offices at noon today in a 24 hour strike against the privatising of the service. The civil servants union, PCS, is supporting the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) who represent the striking probation staff. In...
MORE than 2,000 Tamils and their supporters marched from Embankment to Downing Street on Saturday afternoon. They demanded the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference planned to be held in Sri Lanka from 15th-17th November must be cancelled. As the march was assembling, Indran told News Line: ‘We are demonstrating against David...
THE UK government is hell-bent on using the just-agreed Royal Charter for the regulation of the media to impose a system of state control over the media. Its fundamental purpose is not to curb the tabloid media, which after all supplied Cameron with his Downing Street press chief Coulson, but...
FIREFIGHTERS in England and Wales are on strike from 6am to 8 am today against the vicious government onslaught on their pensions and retirement age. It is the second strike action in three days. The first was last Friday evening. At exactly 18:30pm Friday the shutters opened and FBU...
UNIVERSITY lecturers and staff angry at the employers’ refusal to budge from a 1% pay offer, which represents a real-terms pay cut of 13% since 2008, were out on strike on Thursday, shutting buildings, departments and entire universities’ classes across the country. The three unions that represent lecturers and university...
ISRAEL has made it brutally plain that it is not in the slightest interested in negotiating any ‘peace of the brave’ with the Palestinian people. It is obsessed with establishing a ‘greater Israel’ that absorbs the Jordan valley and part of the West Bank into the state of Israel,...
FIREFIGHTERS across England and Wales took strike action last night from 6.30pm to 11.00pm and will strike again from 6.00am to 8.00am on Monday 4th November. Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said: ‘It is ludicrous that, after two years of negotiations, the government has still not sorted out...
HOSPITAL workers at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, Wiltshire, are set to take further strike action against yet another round of vicious attacks on their jobs, wages and working conditions by the international privateer Carillion. The mainly women workers have voted by a massive 98.3% in favour of industrial...
IN an attempt to shift the blame for the crisis in the NHS away from the massive cuts inflicted on it by the Tory-led coalition, the National Audit Office has produced a report stating that the real villains are doctors and a population that selfishly persists in living too...
ACROSS the UK yesterday morning, university lecturers and staff walked out on strike against an ‘insulting’ 1% pay offer which, when taken into account with the spiralling cost of food, rent and energy, amounts to a big pay cut. Buildings, departments and entire universities’ classes were shut across the country...