Monthly Archives: January 2015
DEFLATION ran amok yesterday as Tullow Oil wrote off $2.2bn (£1.45bn), a direct result of the oil price collapse after the World Bank warned of a two-year slowdown in the world economy. Bank of England Governor Carney warned that the Scottish economy was heading for a ‘negative shock’. This turned out...
UNISON police staff members working in forces in England and Wales are to stage a 24-hour strike starting at 07.00 hours on Friday 23 January, followed by a month of action short of strike action. Unison represents 30,000 police staff in England and Wales. They work in jobs such as...
BUS workers called for the entire bus service to be taken back into public hands and renationalised, during Tuesday’s 24-hour London wide strike over pay. Mass pickets were out at bus garages across London, bringing the capital to a grinding halt. Unite pickets were out from 3.45am at Metroline’s Holloway bus...
EAST of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) management operated a policy of downgrading target response times for 999 emergency calls from December 18th 2013 to Feb 22nd 2014 last year. This government-supported savage cuts policy has had the most deadly results. Staff in the Emergency Operations Centre raised concerns...
EU-US talks aimed at clinching a comprehensive free trade deal, that will allow the US to economically and politically dominate Europe and defy EU governments that object, has run into a vast tide of opposition – a ‘huge scepticism’ as the European Commission puts it. he Commission has published the...
SHEFFIELD College lecturers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action in defence of jobs and quality of education. 86% of University College Union (UCU) members who voted backed strike action and 95% supported action short of strike, which could see staff working strictly to contract and boycotting the systems...
‘WE are rock solid!’ Unite leader Len McCluskey declared yesterday during the 24-hour London-wide bus strike that brought the capital to a standstill. He was addressing a 200 strong mass picket of striking bus workers at Camberwell Bus Garage, one of the many mass pickets at bus garages across London. McCluskey...
IN the wake of the French terror attacks PM Cameron has promised a ‘comprehensive piece of legislation’ to close the ‘safe spaces’ used by suspected terrorists to communicate online with each other. Cameron wants the police and the secret police to have access to all and every electronic communication,...
THE Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) described confrontation with the US and Israel as the achievements of the Islamic Revolution, stressing that opposing ‘bullying powers’ should stay in place. ‘Opposition to tyranny and countering all bullies are among the achievements that should be preserved. We...
ON Friday the Tories finally produced their plans to ban strikes throughout the public sector should they win the next general election. Draconian new legislation to augment the battery of anti-trade union legislation already on the statute books, will centre on increasing the ballot threshold required to call ‘legal’ strike...
NHS workers are striking again in a row over pay. Unison members working in the NHS in England will walkout for 12 hours between 9am–9pm on Thursday 29th January. They will then work to rule between Friday 30th January and Tuesday 24th February which means they will be working their contracted...
1.1 MILLION households who cannot afford to heat their home to a comfortable level are in work, according to a new report by the Policy Exchange think tank. The report, Warmer Homes, presents a character profile of the 2.3 million households in England living in fuel poverty. It suggests that fuel...
WHEN the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine lampooned the prophet, it knew that it was trampling over the religious susceptibilities of millions of Muslims, and that it would enrage many and lead to a few deciding that the ‘prophet must be avenged’. They were exercising the ‘Freedom of the Press’, a...
THIS week saw the crisis in the NHS reach breaking point with at least 17 hospitals in England declaring they faced a ‘major incident’ over A&E services and were being forced to resort to emergency measures to cope with the number of patients seeking emergency treatment. Performance targets achievement, for...
‘WE cannot continue to meet rising demand with falling investment, general practice is already stretched close to breaking point so we need to address this as a matter of urgency,’ warned Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the BMA GP committee, yesterday. He was responding to a report by parliamentary...
CIRCLE HOLDINGS, the first privateer to take over the running of an NHS hospital, quit the management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire yesterday, leaving the much-needed District General Hospital threatened with closure. In a Tory flagship policy, the government handed over Hinchingbrooke to Circle in the spring of 2012. It is...
THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has admitted that the management of workers’ money through its Kopano Ke Matla investment arm was not done with good governance and cost millions of rands, posing a risk to its financial credibility with members. A 2013 financial services board report revealed,...
STUDENTS and trade unions yesterday condemned next Monday’s opening of the first private medical school since the 1940s, charging students an astronomic £162,000 for the degree course. The school is being opened by the first private university to be granted a royal charter, Buckinghamshire University, which says it has been...
FRENCH police have arrested several suspects over the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine massacre in Paris, which killed 12 people to ‘avenge an insult to the prophet’. The whole country has begun a day of official mourning for what Francois Hollande called ‘an act of exceptional barbarism’, with hundreds of...
SIPTU is calling for action on soaring rents to prevent further job losses immediately as the Irish deficit crisis deepens. The union has called on the Government to take action to end upward only rent reviews which are negatively impacting on workers’ wages and employment in the hospitality and catering...
A MONTH before the start of the 2007 financial crash, the Bank of England was completely unaware of the impending biggest disaster in the history of capitalism. It was even patting itself on the back over the ‘success’ of its regulation – a deadly case of the blind leading...
LAMBETH College UCU (University and College Union), resumed their strike action yesterday against the imposition of inferior work contracts, by Lambeth College management. This week’s two-day strike, will be followed by a three-day strike next week, and an indefinite strike from 19th January. Spirits were high as branch Secretary Mandy Brown...
HEALTH unions responded angrily to figures released yesterday showing the worst NHS waiting times in decades. This unprecedented crisis, the unions said, is a result of massive staff shortages, the closure of A&E’s up and down the country and the privatisation of the NHS. NHS workers are simultaneously embroiled in an escalating...
JAPANESE stocks led big falls across Asia on Tuesday, posting their biggest drop in nearly 10 months, as investors became hysterical about falling oil prices and the deepening crisis of the European Union, particularly with the forthcoming Greek crisis election on January 25th. The benchmark Nikkei 225 closed down 3%...
PALESTINE Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee member and chief negotiator Dr. Saeb Erekat issued a defiant statement on Monday in response to the halting of Palestinian tax revenues by Israel. ‘In response to our legitimate step to seek international justice for our people following decades of Israeli human rights violations...
DOCK workers at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports last Friday protested against a partial work stoppage ordered by a group representing West Coast terminal operators, saying it will slow down the unloading of cargo by several days. But the terminal operators’ group, Pacific Maritime Association, countered that there...
ED MILIBAND kicked-off Labour’s election campaign yesterday with a speech full of bombast and empty promises, but which has at its core the main pledge to carry on with the Tory cuts in order to reduce the budget deficit. Faced with a Tory party that intends to spend three times...
‘WE HAVE got to make our case, explaining our vision house by house, street by street, town by town’, Labour leader Ed Miliband told a rally of Labour activists in Salford to launch the party’s election campaign yesterday. Miliband continued: ‘Now our campaign is setting a goal that has...
OVER three million people fear missing rent or mortgage payments this January because of ‘sky high housing costs’, putting them at risk of being evicted, a Shelter report released yesterday shows. Shelter said: ‘Millions might be facing a not-so-happy new year, as new research reveals one in nine rent...
PALESTINIAN Authority chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said during an interview last Friday, that Palestine would become a member of the International Criminal Court by March. The statements, which come after days of heavy criticism of the PA for the failure to pass a UN resolution on Palestine statehood, came during...
THE NHS ‘cannot survive a second term of Tory-led government,’ the Labour Party’s Chair of General Election Strategy, Douglas Alexander, said yesterday. He was echoing Shadow Health Secretary Burnham’s remarks to the Sunday Mirror that handing David Cameron another five years in charge of our hospitals would create a ‘toxic...
THE Greek working class, Greek youth and the majority of the middle class and the small farmers have battled the EU imposed austerity programmes with a massive determination. Now on January 25th there is to be a general election, that has been forced on the reactionary coalition that is carrying...
WITH the beginning of the New Year, President Bashar al-Assad visited army and popular defense forces on the firing lines of Jobar, in the Damascus countryside. President al-Assad toured a number of posts and military units which face armed terrorist groups, hailing and appreciating the forces’ victories and sacrifices...
DOCTORS will not sign up to the Tory government’s proposals for a seven-day-a-week, 24-hours-a-day NHS service because the plans are ‘unfunded, undefined’, ‘wholly unrealistic’ and ‘unsafe’. In a submission by the BMA to the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration Board (DDRB) the BMA said that any proposed changes to doctors’ contracts...
WRITING in the Guardian this week, Labour shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, made it clear that the Labour leadership’s economic policy consisted solely of moving into the Tory territory of cutting the budget deficit by waging war on the public sector. According to Balls, he and Miliband are now confident that...
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi condemned Tuesday night’s UN Security Council abstentions on a motion to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine as ‘outrageously shameful’. ‘It is ironic that while the United Nations designated 2014 as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the resolution...
THE British ruling class has played a special role as far as Palestine in concerned. In the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote to Baron Rothschild a communication for the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland pledging to hand over Palestine,...