Monthly Archives: October 2014
PUBLIC and Commercial Servants union (PCS) members were out on picket lines since before dawn yesterday as tens of thousands came out in support of their national one-day strike over pay, conditions, pensions and privatisation. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka told News Line at a London photocall opposite parliament: ‘Early...
GLOBAL financial markets are dangerously stretched and may unwind with shock force as liquidity dries up, the Bank of International Settlements has warned. BIS boss Debelle has commented that, ‘The sell-off, particularly in fixed income, could be relatively violent when it comes. There are a number of investors buying assets...
HEALTH workers throughout the country came out solidly on strike on Monday against the government’s refusal to increase their pay by 1% for those who receive regular annual increments. Midwives who have not been on strike for 134 years turned out en masse on picket lines on Monday morning. At Luton...
‘A MOMENTOUS vote that is a stepping stone towards rectifying the historic injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people,’ Palestinian Ambassador Manuel Hassassian said yesterday in response to Monday night’s overwhelming YES vote in parliament for recognising the state of Palestine. The vote was of 274 in favour to...
‘THAT this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.’ This was the motion that was carried by the House of Commons on Monday night by 274-12, with all of the Tory...
AMBULANCE staff, midwives and hospital staff walked out on strike yesterday in a solid action affecting the whole country. It was the first time midwives have been out on strike for 130 years. There is mass anger at the government for its refusal to grant 1% pay increase to staff who...
ON the day that NHS workers took strike action for the first time in 30 years, and in the case of midwives the first time in their 133 year history, the Tory health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, delivered a contemptuous reply to these workers’ call for a pay rise. He dismissed...
THE Palestinian National Authority has announced the details of its ‘national recovery plan’ for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, which it has estimated will cost around $4bn. The announcement of the plan came on the eve of a major international conference planned for Cairo where more than 30...
LEADING figures in the British and Israeli Labour parties are working together to defeat the resolution to recognise Palestine, that is to be debated and voted on today, according to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper. Israeli Labour Party Secretary-General MK Hilik Bar has issued a letter on the subject...
UNION leaders yesterday angrily condemned the planned strikebreaking by the army and police, announced on the eve of today’s 7am-11am four-hour NHS pay strike. Military personnel and police vans are being drafted in to drive and staff ambulances The Ministry of Defence said about 130 military drivers will replace striking London...
‘I DO NOT think that the West has relinquished its colonial mentality,’ Syrian president Assad said in a recent interview, while the US and their Arab and western allies rained bombs down on Iraq and Syria. Assad compares the latest imperialist war where Arab nations are united against Syria...
TRADE UNION leaders are angry that the government has organised police and army scabbing on today’s four-hour NHS strike over the refusal of the government to accede to paying all staff the miserable 1% ‘pay rise’, (in fact, a pay cut in relation to the rate of inflation). The union...
MANUEL Hassassian, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, has renewed his call on MPs to pass the resolution that will be before the House of Commons this Monday recognising the State of Palestine. He told News Line: ‘There are three important points to make about this. ‘Firstly any recognition of the...
THURSDAY’S by-election in Clacton, caused by the defection to UKIP of the sitting Tory MP, Douglas Carswell, saw the Tory party completely routed. Carswell won by 21,113 votes (59.66%) to the Tory’s 8,709 (24.6%) on a 51.2% turnout, with Labour coming third with 3,957 votes, while the LibDems lost their...
THURSDAY’S by-elections saw voters completely rejecting the Tories, destroying the LibDems and giving the Labour Party a very stiff warning. UKIP gained its first elected MP, with Douglas Carswell taking the seat of Clacton by 12,404 votes. Carswell, who defected from the Tories, knocked his old party, which enjoyed a 12,068...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has demanded the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank under workers’ control in a strongly worded statement. ‘The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has consistently called for the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank, for the abandonment of the neoliberal...
TURKEY’S foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said his country cannot be expected to lead a ground operation against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria on its own. He also called for the creation of a no-fly zone over its border with Syria after talks in Ankara with new NATO chief...
QUEEN Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, south east London, saw GMB members employed by privateer ISS out in force yesterday for a 24-hour strike from 6am in a dispute over a two-tier workforce in the NHS. Members want an end to the two-tier workforce within the hospital, with the same pay...
IRANIAN Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that if it wasn’t for ‘Iran’s support (for Iraq) and presence’ in fighting the group calling itself Islamic State, Baghdad would have ‘fallen. Zarif made the remarks at a joint meeting of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies...
THE US military has started using attack helicopters as well as jet fighters and bombers in attacks against the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, cities that were bastions of support for Saddam Hussein and centres of the resistance to the US and UK armies of occupation after 2003...
PENSION cuts are prompting fears of two-tier pensions being imposed on academics Staff at some of the UK’s most selective universities will have pensions up to 36% worse than their colleagues at the former polytechnics if radical proposals for academic pensions are forced through, warns new analysis released today. The changes...
JUST six years after the beginning of the 2008 financial collapse – at a time when Cameron and Co. are talking about a recovery, and the EU is in the middle of a war over whether to launch a massive quantitative easing money printing operation, while the US...
UNIVERSITY and college lecturers are taking action in defence of their jobs, pay and pensions. They will be taking part in strike action next Tuesday October 14, along with council workers and teachers. In its latest campaign update, on October 3, the University and College Union outlined upcoming action. ‘1. USS...
FORMER Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg offered to help the British government in securing the release of hostage Alan Henning from Islamic State (IS) but was refused. Begg, who is the Outreach Director for advocacy organisation CAGE, said he thought he knew who had been holding the aid worker and...
A 48-HOUR London underground strike is to take place next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, tube workers union RMT said yesterday. RMT said that the strike has been called in the ‘continuing fight against the Mayor’s onslaught on jobs, working conditions, safety and the threat to services, including the wholesale closure...
‘EMERGENCY support schemes’, used by vulnerable families threatened with homelessness or who are struggling to put food on the table, are to be scrapped because of Tory cuts, councils warned yesterday. The Local Government Association (LGA) is calling on the government to reverse its withdrawal of the funding...
DEPUTY Foreign and Expatriates Minister Dr Faysal Miqdad said on Friday that the Syrian people, who are confronting terrorism with epic steadfastness, have the exclusive right to choose their leadership and determine their future. Miqdad was addressing ambassadors and accredited heads of diplomatic missions in Damascus whom he met on...
THE European Central Bank (ECB) monthly policy meeting took place in Naples last Thursday under riot conditions. While Europe’s financial movers and shakers met in an opulent Renaissance palace in the Italian city, over 4,000 workers and students were fighting it out with riot police who used water cannon and...
FORMER senior military commanders are runnng a campaign to strengthen the British army for a war in Syria. The former head of the armed forces has called for the British army to increase in size, in order to tackle Islamic State (IS) and other Muslim extremists. General Lord Richards said ‘thousands’...
THE Hong Kong pro-democracy protests have now moved into their second week. The Hong Kong Federation of Students withdrew from planned negotiations on Friday, accusing the government of allowing gangs to attack protesters, a claim denied by Hong Kong’s security chief, Lai Tung-kwok. The reality is that the policy of...
TRAFFIC wardens are into their second day of strike action today in an escalating struggle over pay and union rights. GMB the union which represents the striking traffic wardens said in a statement: ‘Wandsworth’s yellow lines and restricted parking bays will be left free for all during a two-day strike...
DISABLED people in Scotland are being starved by the Tory government, with some people waiting as long as 15 months without receiving a single penny benefit. According to the report by Citizens Advice Scotland, the average waiting time that disabled people have to endure before receiving their...
IN HIS closing speech to the Tory conference, Cameron pledged that a future Tory government would scrap the Human Rights Act, a position that was reinforced yesterday by the Tory justice minister, Chris Grayling, who announced that the Tories would withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) unless...
A NEW 2015/16 contract was signed by NHS Employers and the BMA’s GP committee on 30th September. However, there is nothing in next year’s contract to address the desperate shortage of 8,000 GPs. In fact, government policy is to strangle traditional GP practices through underfunding so that more and...
WITH the dust barely settled on both the Labour and Tory Party conferences, the brutal reality of the economic crisis gripping British capitalism is already making a mockery of the ‘pledges’ being made by both parties that the NHS is ‘safe in their hands’. Labour’s shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham,...
MOSCOW authorities have said that they view Kiev’s shelling of a school in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk as a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. This was the message yesterday from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Special Representative for Human Rights, Konstantin Dolgov. ‘The particular cynicism of this shelling is...
TORY health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s speech to delegates at the annual Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) conference in Liverpool yesterday morning was angrily received by delegates but welcomed by the leadership of the RCGP. He was promoting Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s extremely unpopular proposal to make GPs available...
CAMERON closed the crisis-dominated Tory Party Conference in Birmingham yesterday by announcing that if the Tories are elected next May they will cut taxes, funded by another £25 billion in public service cuts, along with an escalation of the war on the working class, the unemployed and especially, the...
TURKEY is poised to join the US-led war to remove the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as having its own agenda to crush Kurdish nationalism. Ankara’s parliament is today expected to approve a request from the Erdogan government to conduct military operations in Syria and Iraq, and...
THE past few days have seen an escalation of the imperialist war against Syria and the government of Bashar al-Assad. Today the Turkish government is putting forward a resolution to its parliament reversing its policy of ‘non-intervention’ in Syria to approve the use of force in Syria and Iraq, ostensibly to...
THE Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blatantly manipulated the facts when he compared Hamas with the Islamic State group in a UN speech on Monday. ‘Netanyahu’s speech at the UN was a blatant manipulation of facts and attempted at misleading the audience through a combination...