Monthly Archives: November 2014
SCHOOLS across England are at risk of teacher shortages in key subject areas, according to government figures released last Thursday. The figures show that there was a fall in the targeted number of places filled from 95% to 93% between 2013/14 and 2014/15. However, just 91% of targeted secondary school places...
BLACK Friday came to the UK yesterday with scenes of chaos and mayhem in supermarkets up and down the country, scenes that came close to rioting on occasions, as police and security guards battled with thousands of people desperately seeking the bargains promised. In Greater Manchester, police had to rush...
PRIME Minister Cameron yesterday announced plans for a new raft of savage attacks on migrant workers. In a widely publicised speech given in a factory in the West Midlands, he outlined plans to be carried out if the Tories win next year’s general election. These are: • Banning EU migrants...
THE Smith Commission has proposed, with the support of all the major parties, that the Scottish Parliament should have the power to set income tax rates and bands, and that a share of VAT should be assigned to the parliament, with Air Passenger Duty fully devolved. The Scottish parliament will...
ISRAELI occupation forces arrested 13 Palestinians in overnight West Bank raids on Wednesday night – one of the arrests was south of Nablus, five were south of Ramallah, five near Bethlehem and two south of Hebron. In the Bethlehem district, Israeli forces raided the village of Wadi Fukin and...
THE SMITH Commission has announced recommendations that devolution be strengthened, with new powers for the Scottish Parliament to set income tax rates, benefits and the power to allow the voting age to drop to 16. Its findings will form the basis of legislation on more Scottish powers to be put...
THE leader of the British Medical Association (BMA) warned yesterday that the health service is under unprecedented pressure, with many parts of the NHS now close to breaking point. Speaking before the Parliamentary NHS Select Committee on funding for health care, Dr Mark Porter, Chair of BMA Council, warned that demand...
DAVID Anderson QC, the government’s ‘independent reviewer’ of terrorism legislation, asked a basic question about the powers that Home Secretary May’s will acquire if her new counter-terrorism bill becomes law. He asked, ‘Where are the courts?’ especially in relation to the proposed exclusion of British passport holders from the UK...
ON Monday 24 November, International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, delivered his message to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations and other UN dignitories. ‘Excellencies, Ladies and...
HUNDREDS of thousands of NHS workers in England and the north of Ireland went on a four-hour strike on Monday morning. Nurses, cleaners, porters, midwives, occupational therapists, paramedics, scientists, radiographers, admin, catering and security staff joined picket lines around the country. The unions on strike were: Unison, Royal College of Midwives,...
THE official inquiry into the killing of Lee Rigby in 2013 has highlighted the contacts that MI5 and MI6 had with the two attackers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale had been known by the secret services for eight years. However, the report by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee (ISC) published yesterday,...
THE US town of Ferguson, Missouri erupted yesterday after a grand jury decided not to bring charges against a white policeman, Darren Wilson, over the killing of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown on 9 August. St Louis County police chief, Jon Belmar, said violence in the suburb of...
DELEGATES to the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) biennial conference in Kilkenny on Sunday called on the Irish government to abolish the proposed water charges ‘with immediate effect’. They said that they ‘will campaign to achieve that outcome while supporting the ICTU call for a constitutional referendum to retain...
ANGRY NHS workers were on picket lines outside hospitals and ambulance stations around the country yesterday as around half-a-million members of ten health unions went on strike. It was the second strike in a month against the government’s refusal to pay all health workers the miserable 1% pay rise,...
ON the day that up to 400,000 health workers in England came out on a second four-hour strike over the refusal of the government to give even the derisory 1% pay rise recommended by the Pay Review Body, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation issued another report exposing the Dickension poverty...
WORKERS at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich in south east London were on strike yesterday and are striking again today in a bitter struggle against the privateer ISS, which is attempting to bring in a two tier workforce at the hospital. Over 200 GMB members, employed by ISS at the...
MENTAL health services across the UK are under unprecedented strain, with a steep fall in nurse numbers and available beds at a time of rising demand, according to a new report published by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). There are now 3,300 fewer posts in mental health nursing, and...
WE already know that new legislation to be put forward by the government has as one of its features ‘internal relocation’ for British passport holders that the British state wishes to prevent from travelling abroad, or suspects of thinking dangerous thoughts while resident in the UK and passing such...
DRIVERS who shuttle Facebook employees to and from the company headquarters in Menlo Park., Calif., have voted in favour of representation by Teamsters Local 853 in San Leandro, Calif. The 87 drivers, employees of Loop Transportation, organised to improve their working conditions, including low pay and an abusive split shift...
AFTER the Tories’ defeat at the hands of a defector to UKIP in the recent Clacton by-election, David Cameron vowed that he would ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at Thursday’s Rochester vote, caused by another defector from the Tory ranks, Mark Reckless. The net result of this massive campaign was yet...
IRAN’S Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Ali Ja’fari has warned that the USA is ‘keen’ to strike a nuclear deal with Iran in pursuit of its own aims. Ja’fari made the statement in his speech at a ceremony of commemoration of Iran-Iraq war ‘martyrs’ held in Qom on...
UKIP has its second elected MP at Westminster after Mark Reckless won the Rochester and Strood by-election yesterday. Reckless took 16,867 votes, 2,920 more than Tory Kelly Tolhurst’s 13,947, with Labour’s Naushabah Khan on 6,713 – ahead of the Green Party. The Lib Dems came fifth with 349 votes their...
SEVERAL students were arrested at the end of an occupation of Parliament Square by hundreds of student protesters on Wednesday. They were part of a 10,000-strong march against fees, cuts and the privatisation of education. The marchers chanted ‘Free Education Now!’ on their way through central London to Parliament. There were...
LEFT parties in Germany have agreed a historic coalition deal which will see the first left state government in Thuringia, East Germany, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 25th anniversary of which took place last week. Under the agreement, Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke party (the successor to...
OVER 35,000 university and school students, youth and workers joined the 41st Anniversary March of the Athens Polytechnic Uprising in Athens on Monday. They were chanting slogans against NATO, the EE and the Greek coalition government, against imperialism and war, for the victory of Palestine, and for occupations to fight...
THE full price for the capitulation of the CWU leadership over the privatisation of Royal Mail is now rapidly emerging. The union, which halted the privatisation drive of the Blair-Brown Labour governments, saw its leadership surrender without a fight to privatisation under the Tories. This is after 96% of postal...
‘FREE Education Now!’ chanted over 10,000 students on a march through central London to Parliament yesterday. Demonstrators from all over Britain also shouted: ‘Workers and students Unite and Fight’. Lots of placards said ‘Free Education – Tax the Rich’. A lively delegation of Young Socialists won support for their demands: ‘Stop...
ON Saturday 15th November, the 26th anniversary of the Palestinian ‘declaration of independence’, and 10th Anniversary of the death of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat, President Mahmud Abbas delivered a speech at the Presidency in Ramallah. President Abbas said: ‘Sisters, brothers in the homeland and the diaspora, on such a day...
SPENDING on Welfare over this Parliamentary term has fallen by just £2.5bn despite the Tory-led coalition aiming to slash spending by £19bn. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the reasons included a rise in the cost of pensioner benefits and an increase in housing benefit spend, adding that Chancellor...
STUDENT Unions (SU) across the country have slammed the National Union of Students (NUS) President Toni Pearce’s decision to pull out of today’s national demonstration against fees and cuts. Ronnie Rowlands, Lancaster University Students Union (LUSU) Vice President (Campaigns and Communications), told News Line that despite the national representative body...
TENANTS on the New Era estate in Hoxton, Hackney, east London, face eviction ‘ASAP’ after a promise not to impose huge rent increases had been scrapped by the new owners of the estate. The New Era estate which had until now provided affordable rents to local people, was bought this...
THE head of the German union (IG Metall) representing automotive workers has spoken out against Volkswagen working with anti-labour groups at its plant in Tennessee. In a statement issued last Friday in Frankfurt, Germany, IG Metall President Detlef Wetzel called on Volkswagen to ‘show its true colours’ in officially recognising...
WRITING in the Guardian yesterday, David Cameron announced that, following his meeting with world leaders at the G20 conference in Brisbane, he has suddenly come to realise that: ‘Six years on from the financial crash that brought the world to its knees, red warning lights are once again flashing...
YOUNG people across the UK have told the TUC and Generation Rent that they face unaffordable housing costs, insecurity of tenure and exploitation by private landlords. More than 2,300 young people responded to a request to share their housing experiences via a web questionnaire. Half of respondents were renting (50 per...
PRESIDENT PUTIN has left the G20 summit in Australia early after a relentless attack on Russia was mounted by the USA-UK axis and its principal running dogs. Cameron and Obama are angry that Putin has not allowed them entirely to get away with their coup in the Ukraine, whose...
MORE than 200 workers, trade unionists, students and youth marched through Whitechapel to Bethnal Green in central London on Saturday to the News Line Anniversary Rally. The march and rally to mark the 45th anniversary of the Daily News Line and the 74th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky...
DAVID Cameron chose the G20 meeting in Australia to unveil the latest coalition plans to strip British passport holders of their citizenship if they are suspected of travelling abroad to fight for the Islamist ISIS group in Syria and Iraq. A new counter-terrorism bill, to be rushed into law by...
JAILED Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, the leader of the Second Intifada, has urged the Palestinian leadership to give its backing to armed resistance to end the Israeli occupation. In a letter sent from his cell in the Israeli Hadarim Prison on 11 November, Prisoner Marwan al-Barghouthi, member of the...
RIGHTS groups yesterday slammed government plans for new laws to stop British nationals, who have been suspected of travelling to Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State, returning to the UK. Prime minister Cameron, who is in Australia for the G20 summit, announced the plans in a speech to...
A DAMNING investigation has found that individuals who sit on the board of the south London Durand Adademy Trust were also acting as directors of companies from which the academy trust purchased services. A ‘conflict of interest’ would amount to the academy ‘paying itself’ with public money...
PRESIDENT Barack Obama has stepped up the number of US troops in Iraq to over 3,000 and has also admitted that there may be a further reinforcement of US ‘trainers’. These numbers do not include the hundreds of US troops that are guarding the US embassy, the biggest US embassy...
‘THE US and the West continue to blunder after the Gulf and Ottoman (Turkish) bets failed to bring down the Syrian state thanks to the achievements that the Syrian Arab Army are creating on the ground,’ says the Al Thawra newspaper website in Damascus. It speculates: ‘As a result of...