Monthly Archives: September 2014
THE Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which Unite says places the NHS at ‘unique risk of being irreversibly privatised’, will not exclude healthcare, Tory Health Minister Earl Howe insisted yesterday. The TTIP conditions are currently being negotiated by the EU and US. Unite has warned that the TTIP is aimed...
UK Prime Minister Cameron said yesterday that the UK supports US airstrikes against the IS not with boots on the ground, but by other means and that the UK was ‘ready to take whatever steps are necessary’. Cameron did not recall parliament and did not say that he was...
THE NEWS that the coalition government has very quietly slipped a clause into the contracts being handed out to private companies to run probation services that guarantees their ‘expected’ profits for ten years has been denounced as ‘unprecedented’. It may be unprecedented but it will not remain that for long...
SET on restoring the once-formidable Soviet military presence in the highly contested and resource-rich Arctic, the Russian military has begun building new military bases in the region, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Monday. ‘On Wrangel Island and Cape Schmidt, block-modules have been unloaded for the construction of military camps....
FIREFIGHTERS in Cornwall have slammed ‘dangerous’ plans to cut frontline cover which ‘will seriously affect public safety’ and demand that they are immediately withdrawn. They also fear that these cuts will be rolled out across the country. The cuts have been put forward by Cornwall County Council as part of...
PALESTINIAN prisoners in Israel struck on 10th September over the death of prisoner Ra’id al-Ja’bari which Fatah describes as an Israeli, ‘ugly crime’. ‘Isa Qaraqi, chairman of the Commission for Prisoners and Liberated Prisoners, said this evening that the prisoners in the Israeli occupation prisons launched a comprehensive strike to...
SPEAKING in a House of Commons debate on Wednesday, former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke described the US-UK Iraq invasion as ‘disastrous’ and a ‘catastrophe’, which has contributed to the ‘anarchy’ in the region today. Clarke warned British Prime Minister David Cameron against launching airstrikes against ISIL and its Islamic State, IS,...
US President Barack Obama outlined his long-awaited ‘strategy’ on Wednesday night to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ the Islamist group ISIL that has established an Islamic State (IS). Obama vowed to ‘eradicate’ the group. He said: ‘My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak to you about what the United States...
A GP practice in Herefordshire is being forced to shut down two of its branch surgeries because of recruitment problems, in a move the Local Medical Committee (LMC) has warned could prove ‘extremely destabilising’ for GPs and patients. Two surgeries in Herefordshire are set to close in a matter of...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has released a full statement saying it is ‘outraged’ by accusations that Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is a CIA plant. Numsa said that the accusations by the Deputy Minister of Defence and chairperson of the Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) Kebby Maphatsoe...
BRITISH CAPITALISM is on the rocks economically and politically, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The leaders of the three major parties have travelled to Scotland to try and rescue the UK from oblivion, but already the ruling class is disintegrating, with the Queen, a relic of feudalism,...
DELEGATES at the TUC Conference in Liverpool yesterday voted unanimously for Composite 14, Protect Probation and Speak up for Justice. The motion calls on the General Council to ‘call upon an incoming Labour government to revoke any contracts should any of these be awarded this side of the next general...
ON Sunday at the TUC Congress delegates voted unanimously to defend the right to strike, with GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny declaring: ‘If the Conservatives come to power they want to shackle the trade unions. ‘They want to sweep away the rights of public sector and private sector workers.’ Addressing the...
THE MH17 crash was a result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that struck the Boeing from the outside, the preliminary report into the Malaysia Airlines disaster in Ukraine said. ‘Flight MH17 with a Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines broke up in the air...
POLLS showing that the campaign for Scottish independence could win the referendum, due to take place in nine days time, has caused panic amongst politicians of all the main parties as well as fear in the world banking and financial sector. The price of the pound plummeted as the international...
PREPARATION is underway for a ‘decisive’ battle, to storm the city of Benghazi and expel the Islamist militias, by pro-US forces led by Major-General Haftar. Colonel Muhammad Hijazi, the official spokesman for National Libyan Army in the city of Benghazi, Libya, said army forces, led by retired Major-General Khalifah Haftar,...
DELEGATES at the TUC Congress yesterday unanimously voted for Composite Motion 7 on Public Sector Pay and Living Standards. This includes the call on the TUC General Council to ‘draw up a joint industrial action strategy amongst affiliates, co-ordinating strike action amongst affiliates who are in dispute with their employers...
THE OSCE has revealed the 12-point roadmap behind the September 5 truce signed in Minsk. The document, titled ‘Protocol on the results of consultations of the Trilateral Contact Group’ and signed in Minsk on September 5, outlines what needs to be done for the ceasefire to stay in place. ‘To...
THE Young Socialists completed the final leg of their 248-mile March For Jobs from London to the TUC Congress in Liverpool yesterday mid-day. Birmingham and West Midlands GMB Regional Secretary, Joe Morgan and colleagues warmly welcomed the marchers and said: ‘We need the Young Socialists to keep us on our...
THE gap between the richest Americans and the rest of the nation has widened after the recession, highlighting the worsening income inequality in the United States, a new survey has found, as over 450 were arrested during sit-in protests by fast food workers in 150 US cities. The new survey,...
WHILE the marchers stopped to get their picture by the statue of the leader of the English Revolution, Oliver Cromwell, yesterday morning, the local paper, the Warrington Guardian, came out to take an interview about the YS March for Jobs from Liverpool to London. This was Day 18 of the...
THE understanding that in times of acute capitalist crisis the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way is being borne out by the acute crisis in the Tory party, a crisis that is forcing Cameron to tear up the bourgeois democratic rule book and override parliamentary...
EDUCATION secretaries need to ‘up their game’, listen to the professionals or step away to avoid damaging children’s life chances, says Association of Teacher and Lecturer’s (ATL) president Mark Baker. Speaking in London at the president’s reception on Thursday night, Baker said to Nicky Morgan and future secretaries of state...
KIEV officials and representatives of the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine have agreed to a ceasefire, as the contact group met behind closed doors in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. The truce agreement came into force starting at 15.00 GMT yesterday. A protocol to start a ceasefire...
‘MANCHESTER University Students Union (SU) supports the march because we support the fight for better opportunities for today’s youth,’ said Charlie Cook, the SU General Secretary yesterday morning. She was talking to News Line on Day 17 of the YS London to Liverpool March for Jobs. The YS marchers shouted: ‘What...
CURRENTLY all over the country A&E’s are being closed, in some areas entire hospitals are to be demolished, while the number of private patients to be taken by NHS hospitals is being driven up. On September 10th, the A&E’s at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex hospitals are closing, while Charing Cross...
The Palestine Liberation Organisation issued a media brief on Tuesday, entitled: Israel’s Colonisation in Western Bethlehem and its Policy of Destroying the Prospects for Peace. It stated: ‘The Israeli leadership’s recent, criminal decision to expropriate more than 3,000 dunums (almost 1,000 acres) of Palestinian land, represents the largest Israeli land grab...
WESTERN leaders yesterday criticised Russia for its ‘destabilising’ influence on the crisis in Ukraine, at the start of a Nato summit in Wales. Nato and the UK warned that pressure on Russia would be increased if it did not change course in eastern Ukraine. Prior to the summit, Ukraine’s president briefed...
IRAN’S First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri has said that the new sanctions imposed on his country are against the spirit of the Geneva agreement. ‘The new sanctions imposed on a number of Iranian firms and banks are against the spirit of the Geneva deal,’ Jahangiri said on Monday. Iran and...
PRESIDENT Poroshenko has retracted his earlier statement regarding a ‘permanent ceasefire’ in eastern Ukraine, which followed a phone call between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders. The new wording from Poroshenko’s office talks of a ‘ceasefire regime’. Although an earlier corresponding message from Poroshenko’s office initially talked of a ‘permanent...
THE NATO warlords are meeting in Newport today. That they are not the most popular people on the planet is proven by the fact that 9,500 officers, many with sub-machine guns, are on guard and patrolling the streets of Newport and Cardiff. There are mounted patrols in central Cardiff,...
‘Victory to Palestine!’ rang out through the streets of Central Manchester on Day 15 of the Young Socialists March for Jobs to the TUC Congress, from London to Liverpool. The March for Jobs joined the Palestinian Action Group’s tent on the second night of their occupation of the pavement outside...
CAMERON’S Monday ‘European Council’ statement to parliament was all about the crisis of imperialism, its wars abroad, and dictatorship at home. He managed to discuss the crisis in the Ukraine without mentioning the February coup, when fascist bands financed by the US and the EU overthrew the legal government,...
The United States embassy compound in the Libyan capital of Tripoli has been raided by militiamen, but no Americans were present as the embassy was evacuated more than a month ago. Videos posted on social media show fighters using the US embassy swimming pool, some of them leaping fully-clothed off...
DAY 15 of the 248-mile Young Socialists March for Jobs from London to Liverpool saw the marchers leaving Stockport Labour Club for Manchester. They had enjoyed warm hospitality at the club as well as food dropped off by Naz from Stockport Labour Party. Tom Grundy, a retired AEU member who runs...
EAST Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust serving a population of more than 750,000 people across five different hospitals has been placed under special measures. ‘This is the second trust in Kent to be placed in special measures because of cuts in finances to the NHS,’ Unison regional organiser Simon Bolton...
THIS week, children and young people return to school in England where they face being subjected to a new education curriculum devised by the former Tory education minister, Michael Gove, with the express purpose of setting up the vast majority to fail. This new compulsory curriculum – only compulsory in...
LOCAL residents from Macclesfield, braved the rain yesterday morning to join the Young Socialists March for Jobs as it left the centre of the town on Day 14 of the march to the Trade Union Congress in Liverpool. As the march assembled, Mr Grundy, a retired long distance truck driver...
THE Young Socialists march from London to Liverpool arrived at the Stafford occupation camp to cheers from the campers on Day 11 of the March for Jobs. The camp, which was set up to defend Stafford Hospital from a vicious programme of closures of the hospital’s essential services was in...
THE Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday shows that UKIP, with turncoat Tory MP Carswell as their candidate, will win the October Clacton by-election with 64% of the vote, with a record 48% swing to UKIP. According to the poll, the most popular Tory leader currently, would-be MP and...