Monthly Archives: January 2015
IN AN unprecedented move, NHS hospital trust managers have rejected plans for next year’s NHS payment system, warning that they cannot any longer guarantee ‘safe care’ if the next wave of cuts proceeds. NHS England had proposed a cut of just under 4% once inflation is taken into account as...
THE crisis of world capitalism continues to batter the economies of the eurozone into the ground with virtually every day bringing forth yet more disasters for every one of the 19 member states. The latest figures released yesterday show that even the mighty German economy is gripped by the...
THE life expectancy of Colombians has been reduced by at least two years as a result of the country’s armed conflict and violence related to drug trafficking, said the country’s National Health Observatory (ONS) on Tuesday. Life expectancy is most often measured using a series of public health studies which...
AMBULANCE workers and other NHS staff are ‘determined’ and ‘out solid’ throughout Northern Ireland, the GMB regional officer, Michael Mulholland, said yesterday, during the 24-hour strike over pay. GMB said about 3,000 staff took strike action, including 450 ambulance workers. Mulholland told News Line: ‘The wider NHS membership were out...
IN his speech in Dublin on Wednesday, Bank of England Governor Carney delivered a warning to the EU – as Greek shares collapsed on the news that the Syriza left government intends to halt the privatisation programme and re-employ all sacked public sector workers. Referring to the European Central Bank’s...
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2015, Moscow ON International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Army, Vladimir Putin visited the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre in Moscow. The President saw the exhibition Man and Catastrophe dedicated to the...
NHS trade unions suspended the industrial action planned for today following proposals put forward by the government. Unison head of health and the unions’ lead negotiator, Christina McAnea, said: ‘This isn’t a great offer but it addresses some of the key concerns unions have about low pay in the NHS....
THE new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), announced his government on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the sacked Finance Ministry women cleaners reached 267 days of fighting to get their jobs back at their Camp of Struggle outside the Finance Ministry building in...
THE Royal College of Nursing is concerned that a lack of focus on out-of-hospital care while A&Es are closing will result in an even worse healthcare crisis. Nurses are concerned patients are not getting the right out-of-hospital care for the NHS to justify closing A&Es in west London. Frontline nurses today...
NHS trade unions have called off (‘suspended’) today’s strike and betrayed their members by accepting the government’s decision not to pay the full and measly 1% pay rise to all NHS staff this year, in favour of Tory assurances that there will be a little more jam...
POORER groups have been worst affected by changes to direct taxes, benefits and tax credits despite the Coalition’s promise that the rich would carry the burden of austerity, according to a major new report. Led by the University of Manchester, with LSE and the University of York, the report shows...
THE Attorney General of Mexico has failed to properly investigate all lines of inquiry into allegations of complicity by armed forces and others in authority in the enforced disappearance of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher college, said Amnesty International after meeting with family members of the victims. At...
THERE has been a very bitter winter in Palestine especially in the war ravaged Gaza Strip where tens of thousands of Gazans’ homes were destroyed during the recent Israeli 50 day blitzkreig. Yesterday, the brave people of Gaza were told by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that the UN...
GERMANY has issued warnings to the new Greek government that it must ‘live up to its commitments to its creditors’, and ‘take measures so that the economic recovery continues’. German government spokesman Steffan Seibert continued yesterday: ‘A part of that is Greece holding to its prior commitments and that...
SYRIZA swept to power yesterday in the Greek elections winning 149 seats, just two short of an absolute majority. After the final results came in Syriza’s leader announced that they were forming an anti-austerity coalition with a new party, the Greek Independents who won 13 seats. The outgoing New Democracy party...
‘IRAN and Russia are on the path of strategic defence cooperation’ said the Iranian Daily Javan website on 21 January. It stated: ‘Iranian and Russian developments after the Islamic Revolution have always been accompanied by many peaks and valleys but the two countries have sometimes, much like...
THE victory of Syriza in the Greek election represents a huge blow by the Greek working class against European capitalism. Syriza, the coalition of the radical left, has only existed for a few years, yet on Sunday it swept to within two seats of obtaining an unprecedented overall majority in...
THE killing of two Bedouin youths in southern Israel by police over the last fortnight has shocked the nation’s Palestinian community and has brought storms of protest across the country. The killing of Sami al-Jaar, 22, last Tuesday, January 13, during a raid on Rahat triggered a strong...
A NEW Gallup poll survey shows that 14% of American households describe poverty wages and the cost of healthcare as their most important financial problems, as the American dream continues to turn into a nightmare for the working class and the poor of the USA, in spite of...
OVER 400 West Hendon tenants, leaseholders and supporters marched on Thursday evening from West Hendon to Hendon Town Hall for a lobby of a public inquiry into the ‘regneration’ of the north London estate. Organised by by ‘Our West Hendon’, marchers chanted ‘Whose homes – our homes!’, ‘Whose community –...
ISRAELI conduct during their 50-day war on the Gaza Strip last summer greatly increased the number of civilian casualties, an independent report has said, by failing to differentiate between military targets and civilian populations. Despite claims to the contrary, the military did not give sufficient warning for civilians to...
THE UNIONS will call off next week’s NHS strike if a ‘tangible offer emerges as a result of current talks with Tory health secretary Hunt’, the GMB confirmed yesterday. Meanwhile, preparations are being made to use both military medics and doctors as strike breakers during the 24-hour NHS strike due...
ON Thursday the European Central Bank (ECB), after months of prevarication and splits within its ranks, finally took the decision to launch the eurozone’s own Quantitative Easing (QE) programme. ECB president, Mario Draghi, announced that from March the ECB would be pumping 1.1 trillion euros (£830 billion) in what has...
PRESIDENT Obama’s State of the Union message saw the ‘lame-duck’ president, into the last period of his rule, seeking to convince US workers that the worst is behind them as far as the crisis of capitalism is concerned. He said: ‘We are 15 years into this new century… But tonight,...
DIFFERENT Palestinian factions have denounced the Israeli raid on a Hezbollah convoy which killed six of the Lebanese resistance movement’s fighters. The Islamic Jihad movement praised the fighters martyred in the raid as heroes, as it condemned the Israeli aggression. In a statement released on Monday, the movement...
‘BRITAIN needs a pay rise!’ These were the cynical words of PM Cameron last Friday in Washington, after five years of remorseless wage-cutting in the UK under the Tory-led coalition regime. US journalists laughed at his cynicism and some of them pointed out afterwards that we are living in a...
SCNCUK (Southern Cameroons National Council United Kingdom) is appealing to the Home Office to give Akuchu Maxwell the protection he requires and not deport him today, as is threatened. ‘Maxwell should not be sent back to Cameroon where he will again be tortured and sent to prison. ‘We of SCNCUK are...
THE message from Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England about the NHS crisis, is ‘what crisis?’ There are just too many sick people, especially too many elderly people needing treatment. For him, their care is concentrated in out of date hospitals and A&E’s and unless these hospitals...
WORKERS and small farmers are in occupation for over a week now of the large state owned EBZ sugar-beets factory in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, against closure. EBZ workers are also demanding payment of wages while small farmers want payment for sugar-beets delivered to the factory last year. Last Monday EBZ workers...
SIR Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, says that the basic principles of the NHS, ‘free healthcare at the point of need’ must be challenged. He told the Guardian yesterday, that the NHS is unaffordable and that its continuation as a publicly funded service through taxation, free at the...
RELATIONS between Israeli and Palestinian officials have reached a ‘point of no return,’ PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Monday. The top PLO official made the remarks during a meeting with UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry. Erekat had made similar comments during meetings...
ACADEMY schools in England are sitting on a vast hoard of cash estimated to be nearly £2.5 billion, or more than £550,000 per school. Money that should be used on educating children is being squirreled away by academies – that exist outside any local government control and are responsible only...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA) has kicked off its year with study tours overseas to investigate the feasibility of forming a workers’ party as part of a campaign to explain its political programme to potential allies across the world. The first of these was NUMSA general...
LAMBETH College UCU began an indefinite strike yesterday in their escalating struggle against the imposition of new contracts. The new contracts would take away both holiday and sick pay. Over 100 turned out at a mass rally at midday at the Clapham site. Frank Innes, who teaches at the Vauxhall site,...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to the Czech paper Literarni Noviny. The following are extracts from the interview. Question: Regarding ISIS, it looks like, at least from Europe, that radical Islam is gaining ground in the region, and it will be spreading and spreading. Do you think so, or...
BRITAIN and the US are to share expertise on ‘preventing radicalism’ and tackling domestic ‘violent extremism’, PM Cameron has announced. He warned that both countries faced a ‘poisonous and fanatical ideology’. A task force is being set up that will report back to the two leaders, if they are still...
HEALTH Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has agreed to the relaxing of ambulance response times for some ‘Red 2’ category patients, which include those with strokes, fits and some car crash victims. The pilot scheme will be rolled out for the South West and London regions, in February this year, affecting...
THE decision by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to abandon its three-year cap on the franc last Thursday has had an immediate and catastrophic effect on the euro and directly threatens every other currency in the world. The vast interlocking capitalist ‘conspiracy’ that comprises the world currency markets experienced its...
TUNISIANS on Wednesday marked the fourth anniversary of the revolution that toppled strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and sparked a mass wave of protests across the region. Despite a strike among workers in the transportation sector, hundreds of Tunisians found their way to Avenue Habib Bourguiba in the city centre...
THE very minimum number of nurses required for A&Es to function safely was published yesterday in an attempt to address the acute staff shortage crisis which is gripping the NHS as a result of savage cuts. The BMA said that a ‘lack of necessary investment’ is what must be addressed...
