Monthly Archives: December 2016
New Year’s statement by the News Line Editorial Board THE News Line Editorial Board sends its warmest revolutionary greetings for the New Year of 2017 to all our readers, to the working class, young people and the poor of the world who have risen up and delivered powerful blows against...
HELEN Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs Council, the UK’s leading doctor, warned yesterday that General Practice is in danger of going under. ‘This will bring hospitals down very quickly too, because they will be completely inundated with patients and that’s a risk to the whole...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu damned US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict saying that it was biased against Tel Aviv, in that it dealt ‘obsessively’ with the topic of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and further that ‘Israelis do...
IRAN has successfully test-fired its long-range surface-to-air S-200 missile as its air defence drills enter the final phase in the country’s southern belt. Wednesday marked the third and final day of Modafean-e-Aseman-e-Velayat 7 (The Defenders of Velayat Skies 7) wargames featuring Iran’s Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)....
ON December 8, the White House said that the outgoing US President Barack Obama had relaxed the so-called Arms Export Control Act for the Islamist ‘militants’ ‘supporting US Special Forces’ in Syria, saying such leniency would contribute to ‘the national security interests’ of the US. Russia’s Foreign Ministry commented that...
‘SINCE the great crash of 2007/8 the twin features of inflation of 27% and little or no pay rises have taken a heavy toll on the real value of average earnings for workers in London,’ said Warren Kenny, GMB London regional secretary, yesterday. He continued: ‘For 33 occupations, the real...
RUSSIA and Turkey have reached an agreement on a proposal for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria from midnight, Turkey’s Anadolu state news agency reported yesterday. This came after the two sides brokered a truce that put an end to years of fighting in the northwestern city of Aleppo. The...
SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS recently spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia about the current US crisis and his new book ‘Our Revolution’. He said: ‘No: People are, you know, interested in knowing, well, how did Trump win? How did he win the Electoral College? And I think one of the...
CALLS by NHS England chief nursing officer Jane Cummings to cut acute care beds and close District General Hospitals, were roundly condemned by a leading British Medical Association member yesterday. Writing in yesterday’s Telegraph newspaper, Cummings advocated scrapping ‘outdated’ forms of care and closing ‘old and expensive buildings’. BMA member...
ISRAEL’S Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered the termination of all non-security related coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA), in response to the UN Security Council adoption of a resolution demanding Israel end all settlement building activity. The Jerusalem Post cited sources from Israel’s Ministry of Defence on Sunday saying...
CROWDS in Aleppo took to the streets following the announcement of the Army General Command restoration of security and stability to the city after liberating it from terrorism and terrorists. The citizens marched through the streets, expressing joy over the victory of the Syrian army and its allies on terrorists...
THOUSANDS of Palestinians in the city of al-Bireh in the central occupied West Bank took part in the funeral of 19-year-old Ahmad Nashat Othman al-Kharroubi, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces earlier on Thursday during clashes in Kafr Aqab north of Jerusalem. Al-Kharroubi, who was from al-Bireh, was...
THE LATEST increase in university tuition fees in England to £9,250 by the Tory government has been launched without any announcement from the Department for Education. So scared are they of the backlash from a generation of young people who are already furious at being up to their eyeballs in...
‘THROW the STP plans out!’ said Roseline Nwangwu an Ealing Hospital worker yesterday morning. Unite union member Roseline added: ‘If they close Ealing Hospital A&E there will be chaos. A lot of people will die on their way to Northwick Park Hospital.’ She was speaking at the mass Xmas...
FOLLOWING last month’s ballot result in favour of taking industrial action, RMT’s National Executive Committee has taken the decision to call action and instructs ALL LUL STATION & REVENUE members: Not to book on for any shifts between 1800 on Sunday 8th Jan and 1759 on Monday 9th. The...
THE Tories’ new mass surveillance laws got a setback this week when the European Court of Justice ruled that its snoopers’ charter, the Investigatory Powers Act, is illegal under European law. When the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IP Act) became law last week, Tory home secretary, Amber Rudd, hailed it...
‘THE GOVERNMENT must resolve the long-term funding, capacity and recruitment issues’ if it is going to avoid a ‘winter crisis’ all year round, doctors union the BMA has warned, responding to the new NHS digital A&E figures. Shockingly, the figures for September 2016 released by NHS digital show that 53,000...
MURDOCH University in Perth, Western Australia, is attempting to force ‘safety-net award conditions’ onto staff – slashing their pay by up to 80 per cent. ‘It is an anti-union attack that risks the world-standard resource which makes Australian Universities so desirable for domestic and international students – their staff,’ said...
AS WE approach the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in which British imperialism pledged to hand over somebody else’s country to conquest and settlement by the Zionists, Palestinians are getting angrier and angrier. Their state seems to be getting further away than ever, as Israel extends its settlements,...
THE assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, on Monday by an ex-policeman Mevlut Altintas – who was sacked after the failure of the last Turkish coup attempt – was a planned and calculated murder. Altintas was able to make his way unhindered into a photo exhibition called...
CAMPAIGNERS fighting the closure of maternity services in Lincolnshire say they will ‘not back down!’ Plans to remove consultant-led services in Boston and ‘centralise them’ in Lincoln due to a shortage of trained staff were revealed in a report earlier this month. Boston Support for Neonates and Parents and Preemies...
IRAN’S Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi says the United Kingdom needs to take a retrospective look at its past destructive actions in the Middle East, instead of accusing Iran of sabotage in the region. Speaking at the annual summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Bahrain’s capital Manama on December...
THE NEWS yesterday that analysis by UK government officials that British-made cluster bombs are being used by the Saudi-led coalition in its war against the people of Yemen comes as no surprise. It has long been known that these bombs, sold by Britain to the reactionary Saudi regime, have been...
TRIPOLI – Libya’s unity government leader Fayez al-Sarraj on Saturday officially announced the end of military operations in Sirte, after the liberation from Islamic State group forces of what was the last significant territory they held in the country. However prime minister-designate Sarraj warned that the battle against the Islamic...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) 10th National Congress, held on 12th to 15th December in Cape Town issued a Congress Declaration on the last day: ‘Building Strong, Vibrant and Politically Conscious Workplaces!’ News Line is pleased to publish excerpts: ‘1. NUMSA’s 10th National Congress, held...
‘THIS is an industrial dispute about safety, we are not trying to bring the government down,’ RMT general secretary Mick Cash insisted yesterday. He was responding to calls in the Tory press for PM Theresa May to ban strikes in essential services. In a BBC interview, Cash said of this...
SUNDAY saw the Tory Telegraph accuse PM May of ‘refusing to curb the power of striking trade unions despite a growing backlash from her own MPs as Britain braces itself for more transport chaos over Christmas.’ The bosses are panicking and publicly baying for emergency legislation to ban strikes...
WINTER hospital bed shortages pose a ‘real threat’ to patient care, the Nuffield Trust warned yesterday. On average, about 95% of English hospital beds were occupied last winter, despite 85-90% being the recommended maximum. Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust, said: ‘The NHS is going into this...
THE NHS is the battleground within which the class struggle in this country is being fought out to the finish. The Tory government plans to use its STPs to break up the NHS, smash up the pieces and flog each fragment to the lowest private bidder. The 44 Sustainability and...
DAMASCUS – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has offered felicitations to the Arab nation on the liberation of Aleppo city from foreign-backed militants amid an ongoing mission to take out the remaining armed men and civilians from the embattled northwestern city. In a video posted on the Syrian presidency’s official social...
THE interviews given by Mikhail Gorbachev on the 25th anniversary of the Stalinist bureaucracy overthrowing the USSR show that the question of the restoration of the Soviet Union is rapidly emerging in Russia and in the other soviet states. The former President of the USSR was the main architect of...
HEAD of NHS England, Simon Stephens, has angered millions of workers with his suggestions that pensioners’ free bus passes and their triple-lock pension arrangements should be abolished. He said that there was no point in an entire generation of elderly people having a free bus pass and a good pension...
HEAD of NHS England, Simon Stephens, has angered millions of workers with his suggestions that pensioners’ free bus passes and their triple-lock pension arrangements should be abolished. He said that there was no point in an entire generation of elderly people having a free bus pass and a good pension...
SOME 100 Chagossians demonstrated opposite Downing Street yesterday over their treatment by the British government. Frankie Bontemps told News Line: ‘We’re here following the decision of the British government that we are not allowed to go back to our homeland. We are back to square one. for 50 years we...
HEAD of NHS England, Simon Stephens, has angered millions of workers with his suggestions that pensioners’ free bus passes and their triple-lock pension arrangements should be abolished. He said that there was no point in an entire generation of elderly people having a free bus pass and a good pension...
THE interviews given by Mikhail Gorbachev on the 25th anniversary of the Stalinist bureaucracy overthrowing the USSR show that the question of the restoration of the Soviet Union is rapidly emerging in Russia and in the other soviet states. The former President of the USSR was the main architect of...
STATE schools in England will have to find £3bn in ‘savings’ (ie savage cuts and sackings) by 2019-20, the public spending watchdog has said. Schools face 8% budget cuts under the Tories and about 60% of secondary schools already have deficits, a funding analysis from the National Audit Office (NAO)...
ON Tuesday evening there was dancing in the streets of Aleppo as residents celebrated the defeat of the Islamist factions that had been armed, supplied and financed by the Western powers and the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain to overthrow the Assad government, and to make...
SOUTH African trade union federation COSATU has endorsed Cyril Ramaphosa to become the new leader of the ANC to replace Zuma. Former leader of COSATU Zwelinzima Vavi says that this is a big mistake because Ramaphosa is ‘implicated in the Marikana Massacre’. Zwelinzima Vavi was speaking at the 10th...
CHILDREN will pay a terrible price for £3 billion of savage Tory school budget cuts, education unions warned yesterday. State schools in England will have to find £3bn in ‘savings’ by 2019-20, said the National Audit Office (NAO) yesterday. The Department for Education is about to launch a new funding...
THOUSANDS of cabin crew working for British Airways ‘Mixed Fleet’ have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action over poverty pay and broken promises. Seventy-nine per cent of the crew that took part in the ballot voted for strike action on a turnout of 60%. Unite warned of strike action...
PM May has gone out of her way to insult the Palestinian people by declaring her pride in the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which promised the Zionist movement that the UK would hand it Palestine, regardless of its people. Speaking last Monday at a Conservative Friends of Israel...