Monthly Archives: December 2015
CATHY WARWICK, the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Midwives has issued a ‘wish list’ of her hopes for maternity services in 2016. She calls for an end to the midwifery shortage and calls on the government to ‘rethink’ its plans to remove bursaries for student midwives. She warns...
TIME is now running as far as the negotiations between the BMA’s Junor Doctors Committee (JDC) and the Tory government is concerned. As part of the ACAS talks, the Department of Health and NHS Employers agreed to extend the deadline for the first day of action from four weeks after...
MARKING one week since local Hezbollah leader Samir Al-Kuntar’s assassination near Damascus at the hands of an Israeli missile, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned on Sunday that Hezbollah’s retaliation, which could be inside the Israeli entity or abroad, is inevitable. Nasrallah said: ‘To us, whatever are the consequences...
MAKING use of Russian air power, the Syrian army is now pressing forward on all fronts, driving back the Islamists who are now negotiating to quit Syria and shift back to Turkey or retreat to Raqqa, the IS capital. Russian intervention, an intervention that was defensive in character to prevent...
THE south-east London borough of Newham achieved the dubious record of having the biggest rise in house prices in the whole of the UK in 2015 according to data supplied by building societies and banks. The price of an average house in Newham went up by 22.2% this year as...
THE CWA trade union has issued a statement on the Obama administration’s planned Immigration Raids and proposed mass deportations. It reads: ‘We have seen too much terror this Christmas season. It is disappointing that the US Department of Homeland Security added to this sense of insecurity announcing plans to...
THE Army has been called out in York, Leeds, and parts of Lancashire after flood defences failed. In the case of York the Foss flood barrier was lifted and a part of the city was sacrificed when the River Ouse and River Foss came together to produce a...
‘KEEP your hands off our hospital! This hospital belongs to the public, not the government!’ Kaushalya Gussar declared at the mass picket of Ealing Hospital on Xmas Eve. Over 50 supporters, local residents, patients and trade unionists picketed the front of Ealing Hospital at 7am last Thursday morning demanding that...
UK DEFENCE Secretary Michael Fallon yesterday called for withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph he claimed British troops are being weakened in their fight against terrorists because they fear human rights lawyers will take them to court. Fallon said that...
TWO-THIRDS of all people Tasered by the police in England and Wales between 2010 and 2014 were identified as mentally ill. The figures were made available by the Home Office following a Freedom of Information Act request by www.thejusticegap.com. The data reveals that in 45% of incidents where police used...
‘WE are ready to strike, don’t come back with some half-baked deal,’ junior doctors urged their leaders at a 100-strong BMA London Regional Committee Assembly Meeting on Tuesday evening. Junior Doctors Committee (JDC) Chair Dr Johan Malawana said: ‘The position we took was industrial action was not the be all...
ISRAELI authorities issued administrative detention orders, without charge or trial, against 22 Palestinians on Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) reported. PPS said that 16 detainees received administrative detention orders for the first time, whereas the remaining six received renewed administrative orders. Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the...
LEAVING the EU could lead to the break up of the UK, said former Tory leader and former Foreign Secretary, William Hague yesterday. Since the UK was the foundation from which the industrial revolution led to the rise and rise of British capitalism, Hague is really saying that British capitalism...
BRITISH public finances worsened in November, meaning that Tory Chancellor George Osborne will spectacularly fail to hit his budget deficit target for this year and will have to impose savage new cuts. Headline public borrowing rose to £14.2 billion, 10 per cent higher than the same month last year and...
COLLECTIVE punishment has reached new outrageous levels, with the father of a young Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces being arrested and thrown into jail without trial or charge, simply because he is his father. Israeli authorities on Monday issued an ‘administrative detention order’, on 49-year-old Bassam Hammad, from...
THE Taleban armed forces are now retaking Sangin town in Helmand Province, which was taken over as a British responsibility after the retreat from Basra in Iraq in 2007, and held by the UK forces at the cost of 456 lives, with 247 soldiers having limbs amputated and 2,600...
TWO videos, one by the FBI and one by the British police, have just been issued giving advice to people about actions they should take in the event of a terrorist attack. The video from the FBI is entitled ‘Run, Hide, Fight: Surviving an Active Shooter Event’ and advises that...
‘INDICATIONS from the first half of the year suggest 2015 is on track to see worldwide forced displacement exceeding 60 million for the first time,’ says the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. UNHCR’s Mid-Year Trends 2015 report, covering the period from January to the end of June, and looking at worldwide...
THE Royal College of Nursing yesterday slammed government cuts over the NHS staffing crisis. Janet Davies, RCN Chief Executive and General Secretary said: ‘The RCN warned that cutting workforce numbers to fund the NHS reorganisation and to find the efficiency savings was the wrong course to take. Decisions were taken...
THE general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Matt Wrack, has warned that proposals from Home Secretary Theresa May, to bring fire and rescue services under the control of police and crime and commissioners (PCC) are ‘stupid and dangerous’. The Home Secretary said on 19th December 2015 that by...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has made a visit to a Christian church in an eastern suburb of the capital Damascus as Christmas is approaching. Assad made the visit to the Lady of Damascus Catholic Church with his wife Asma on Friday evening where they watched a choir rehearse and...
PRIME Minister Cameron has ordered a review into the use of guns by police in England and Wales following the Paris terrorist attacks. The review will examine whether the law should support officers who make a wrong ‘split-second’ decision to shoot-to-kill during a Paris-style terror attack. It follows concerns from...
PLO Executive Committee member, Hanan Ashrawi, last Thursday condemned Israel’s unwillingness to punish the ‘terrorists’ responsible for the arson attack in Duma village, south of Nablus. Ashrawi said: ‘We do not expect Israel to execute the suspects, demolish their homes or withdraw their identity cards, as it does with Palestinians,...
GP LEADERS in the doctors’ union, the BMA, yesterday backed a ‘no confidence’ vote in the Care Quality Commission (CQC) chief inspector Professor Steve Field and demanded his resignation. The vote by the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) comes just hours after the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) chairwoman Dr...
AN explosive report into the effect of the ‘Bedroom Tax’ on families throughout the country was published on Thursday – sneaked out on the very day that MPs left Westminster to enjoy their Christmas holiday. Not much festive enjoyment will be felt by the hundreds of thousands of social housing...
‘FOR students like me from a working class background, removing the bursary for nurses will mean that they cannot continue their studies,’ student nurse Danielle Tiplady said on Thursday evening. She was addressing a rally of over 50 junior doctors, nurses, health workers, campaigners and supporters gathered outside the old...
RUSSIA and the US have agreed on a number of ‘critical’ issues, particularly with regard to Syria, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following talks in Moscow. ‘The US stands ready to work with Russia,’ Kerry told journalists after meeting with Russian President...
DISINVESTMENT in general practice by successive governments has drastically hampered doctors’ ability to provide safe care, BMA GPs committee chair Chaand Nagpaul has warned MPs. Dr Nagpaul made the warning during a hearing of the Commons health select committee on 15 December into primary care, pointing out that GP numbers,...
THE US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 0.25 of a percentage point – its first increase since 2006. This is after years of near-zero interest rates, while the capitalist state promoted quantitative easing, and massive austerity programmes, so as to provide the banks with trillions of dollars, euros...
THE UK is ready to back up the newly founded Saudi coalition ground army, with air support in Syria, British military sources told the capitalist press yesterday. The military said that the Royal Air Force are on standby to provide air support and ‘command and control’ to the newly...
‘COLLECTIVE punishment is never permissible under any circumstances,’ human rights charity Amnesty International said, in response to Israeli forces demolishing yet another family home. ties notified the family of Bahaa Elayyan, who was killed in an attack on a Jerusalem bus in October 2015, of orders to demolish the family’s...
ON 30 January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall as a man of blood, and an enemy of the people and of parliament. After his execution, a Republic was proclaimed. The House of Lords was abolished and the new ruling class, led by Oliver...
AS schools prepare to break up for the Christmas holidays, new analysis by the Labour Party reveals the impact of the chronic shortage of teachers up and down the country. New official figures published this week reveal that the amount spent on supply teachers by schools continues to soar. The...
US SECRETARY of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow yesterday to see Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov and also President Putin. His mission, during which he also wants to discuss the Ukraine, is to try and persuade the Russian leadership to agree a date by which President Assad will leave power...
THE determined drive by the Tory government to cut the pay and conditions of every NHS worker, as a prelude to the ultimate aim of privatising the health service and handing it over to the profit hungry health companies, has run into a brick wall of resistance across the...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to the Spanish EFE news agency in which he stressed that Syria will not negotiate with terrorists. We reproduce a number of the questions and the answers. Question: ‘Would you be ready to negotiate, to dialogue, with the opposition groups that are right now...
‘STOP bombing Syria! Welfare not warfare! David Cameron shame on you! Hilary Benn shame on you!’ shouted crowds at the end of a 10,000-strong march in central London on Saturday. The march from the BBC, Portland Place, to a rally outside Downing Street was organised by Stop the War Coalition....
SNP foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond spoke up for millions of British people yesterday when he highlighted the role that one-time Labour PM Blair and Foreign Secretary Straw played when they allowed just released Shaker Aamer to be held without trial or charge at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and...
EX-LABOUR Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and ex-Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ‘must have known’ about the torture of British prisoner Shaker Aamer by the United States, SNP MP Alex Salmond claimed yesterday. In October, Aamer became the final Briton to be freed from Guantanamo Bay where he was held for...