Monthly Archives: July 2016
A NEW report on the non-payment of workers’ wages in Zimbabwe was released earlier this month in Harare, entitled ‘Working Without Pay – Wage Theft in Zimbabwe’. The report, written by the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ) and the Solidarity Centre, explores one of the burning...
THE unfolding saga of the proposed nuclear power station, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, reached a new level of farce late on Thursday when the French-owned energy company EDF unexpectedly decided by a narrow vote of its ruling board to go ahead with financing it. EDF’s UK chief executive was...
GREEK armed riot police squads raided in the early morning of last Wednesday three buildings in the northern city of Thessaloniki where refugees were housed assisted by an international team of volunteers. Police arrested 74 volunteers (of Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish nationalities) who appeared in court on...
FIVE further days of strike action have been confirmed by train union RMT over the removal of all guards from Govia Thameslink trains. Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains are unsafe for passengers as drivers are then responsible for the opening and closing of doors. RMT said: ‘We offered a...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad confirmed yesterday that his government will pardon all ‘militants’ who turn in their weapons, stressing that the policy has been exercised by Damascus since the beginning of the crisis in the Middle Eastern country. ‘If the terrorists want to return to normal life and lay down...
WORKERS in Ohio have spoken out about their struggle earlier this year which saw them go from being unrepresented temporary agency workers to direct employees and members of the auto workers’ union UAW. All 60 workers at an Ohio auto parts plant were temps – until they threatened to strike....
MAHMOUD Abbas, the Palestinian president, is to sue Britain over its 1917 Balfour declaration that paved the way for the establishment of Israel in 1948. His foreign minister, Riad al-Maliki, announced the plan on Monday at the opening of the Arab League summit being held in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott....
BELOW is a declaration issued on Tuesday by the international commission of the central council of Russia’s University Solidarity trade union, on the repression of educational employees in Turkey. ‘The international commission firmly condemns the campaign of repression, unleashed by the Turkish authorities after the unsuccessful attempt at a military...
MOHAMMED Faqih’s body came out of a Hebron house in an army bulldozer bucket on Tuesday night, after the Israeli Army killed him and injured five others in the village of Surif north of Hebron. They bombarded and destroyed the house, claiming he was responsible for a drive-by shooting on...
‘HILLARY Clinton must become the next president of the United States,’ Bernie Sanders told the Democratic Convention on Monday. These words touched off huge cheers of celebration from Clinton supporters, but angered and shocked thousands of his own supporters. Sanders said he would do everything he could to help her...
‘SIGNIFICANT numbers’ of child refugees must be ‘promptly taken in by the UK and cared for’ a Parliamentary committee has demanded. The UK’s European Union Committee published their report ‘Children in crisis: unaccompanied migrant children in the EU’ yesterday. 90,000 child refugees travelling alone across Europe are living in ...
THE UNITED Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) earlier this summer won a major battle in the courts that recognises the UE’s right to join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestine. UEY National President Peter Knowlton has been speaking about the struggle, which will...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Cuba’s official state news agency Prensa Latina last week. The News Line presents selected extracts from the interview below. Interviewer: Mr President, how would you evaluate the current military situation of the external aggression against Syria, and what are the main challenges of...
‘IF PHILIP Green won’t do the right thing by the members of the BHS pension fund then he should have his knighthood removed. And if he says he can’t afford it, then he should sell up his extra yacht,’ shadow chancellor John McDonnell demanded yesterday. McDonnell was responding to a...
THE Tory drive against doctors and health workers throughout the NHS was reaffirmed last week when re-appointed health secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that GPs would be forced to offer a seven day a week service. In a statement Hunt said that he was demanding that NHS England ‘make further progress...
AN INVESTIGATION into academy schools has revealed that huge sums of public money are being spent on expenses claims for academy bosses. The investigation, which was undertaken by the Observer newspaper and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, showed that public money is being claimed for luxury homes, fine dining and first-class...
THE hysterical witch-hunting of Jeremy Corbyn that is being carried out by the bourgeois media, marshalled by Labour’s right wing pro-Tory rebel MPs, is a sure sign that the ruling class in the UK are desperately worried that they are about to lose their second eleven – that is...
A TOTAL of 13,165 people have been detained over the July 15th failed coup attempt, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday. A three-month state of emergency has been declared with those arrested allowed to be held without charge or trial for one month. Erdogan said in a speech broadcast...
THE denigration of workers, wage payment systems of dubious legality and a disregard for health and safety law are among the catalogue of abuses uncovered at Sports Direct’s vast Shirebrook warehouse, a damning new report confirmed on Friday. ‘More of a Victorian workhouse than a warehouse’ was one of the...
A REGIME of ‘financial special measures’ has been announced for trusts and clinical commissioning groups to ensure the NHS lives within its means by making the most savage cuts and closures in the history of the service. Five NHS Trusts and nine CCGs (Community Commissioning Groups) have been put in...
THE results of the ‘consultation’ launched by the Tories on the 7th April on the proposal to end NHS funded bursaries for student nurses, midwives and allied health professionals and replace them with student loans were announced on Thursday by the Department of Health. It was no surprise to...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents within the Labour Party have stepped up their hysterical witch hunt against him, accusing him of ‘stirring up’ his supporters and alleging that he is responsible for ‘abuse and intolerance, misogamy and anti-semitism in the Labour Party’. Angela Eagle who has abandoned her leadership...
THE SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is reflecting on Dallas, Baton Rouge, La., and Falcon Heights, Minn.: Feelings, Thoughts and Action. Working together to make sense of the recent tragedies and trying to create change. The union says: During these difficult times, many of us have turned to our families...
LABOUR leader Corbyn was full of confidence as he opened his campaign to be re-elected as leader of the Labour Party yesterday. He said: ‘I’m proud of what we have achieved in the last ten months. Labour is stronger … we have won every parliamentary by-election we have faced...
UNIVERSITY tuition fees in England will rise to £9,250 per year from 2017 and the increase could apply to students who have already started courses. Universities minister Jo Johnson has published a written ministerial statement setting out plans linking fee increases to better teaching. The fees will increase by inflation...
THE Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has welcomed the news that three Metropolitan Police officers are to face disciplinary proceedings following a racially motivated attack on a black firefighter in 2011. Off duty London firefighter Edric Kennedy-MacFoy was verbally abused and Tasered by police in Harrow, north London after he attempted...
HEALTH Secretary Hunt’s decision to impose the new contract onto junior doctors must be reversed since the premise behind the contract’s proposals is ‘False’. This was the demand from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Neena Modi, who wrote to health secretary Jeremy Hunt...
NOW that the ‘Eagle’ has refused to fly as pledged, she has handed the baton, although just 25 votes behind and with votes still being counted, to Owen Smith to lead the campaign to remove Corbyn as Labour Party leader. It says something for just how much the Labour Party...
THE TORY government gave the ‘wrong impression’ about how much extra they are spending on the NHS, the Health Select Committee said. The committee disputed the Tory figures, it insisted they put in £3.9 billion less than they said they had put in, with the most disastrous consequences. As a...
PATIENTS, NHS workers and privacy campaigners alike are outraged that people’s private medical records are to be put on the internet without their consent in a ‘project’ between Google and Moorfields Eye Hospital. Sarah Cook, head of health at the union Unite, told News Line: ‘Patients should be aware of...
‘IT is shameful that, as one of the richest economies, the UK has provided shelter for less than one per cent of refugees,’ the head of Oxfam commented on Monday. Oxfam’s report A Poor Welcome from the World’s Wealthy, published last Monday, says that the six wealthiest countries on...
SYRIA’S President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday that the Turkish president Erdogan may be using the ‘coup attempt’ in Turkey to eliminate his opponents in government institutions, such as the army, the judiciary and the civil service. Assad was speaking with a visiting delegation of Lebanese politicians headed by Najah...
FOR years the Italian banking system has been kept on a life-support system of government bailouts as it sinks under the weight of astronomical debt. Loans made in the period when the banks could generate huge wealth on paper, by lending money they simply did not possess, have been transformed...
THE Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said on Sunday morning that Israel Prison Service (IPS) forces raided section 5 of Israel’s Ramon prison, where they searched room number 72 and imposed a total closure on the section, which holds exclusively prisoners affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
‘YEARS of squeezing more and more out of an overstretched workforce has left the NHS in a perilous position,’ the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned yesterday. The nurses union was responding to the House of Commons Health Committee Spending Review Report published today on the impact spending cuts have...
UN REFUGEE Agency UNHCR is concerned about Hungary’s new restrictive law, amid increased reports of violence, and a deterioration of the situation at border with Serbia. UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told a press briefing, on 15 July 2016, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva: ‘We are deeply concerned...
150 LABOUR MPs are plotting to form a breakaway party codenamed ‘Continuity Labour’ when Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership battle. Pontypridd Labour MP Stephen Kinnock is tipped to head it. The Mail on Sunday said it understands a group of leading anti-Corbyn MPs are poised to make approaches to Labour’s...
TURKEY’S President Erdogan has called the just concluded coup attempt that saw parliament bombed and 250 people killed ‘a gift from God... because this will be a reason to cleanse our army’. This is what is now happening with 6,000 people detained including 3,000 soldiers arrested (among them 50 senior...
MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have warned that the disproportionate growth in spending on specialised services poses a risk to the financial sustainability of the wider NHS. In a new report, the PAC concludes, ‘NHS England will need to make tough decisions’ to stay within its budget for...
ANYONE naive enough to believe for one second the promise made by the new Tory leader that dumping former chancellor George Osborne and replacing him with Philip Hammond would usher in a ‘relaxation’ of austerity got a rude awakening this week when it was made clear that there will...
ONE hundred and fifty doctors, nurses, health campaigners and their supporters marched and rallied in London to defend the NHS on Thursday evening. The protest organised by NHS Solidarity began with a short rally outside St Bartholemew’s Hospital to a closing rally opposite St Paul’s Cathedral. News Line spoke to...