Monthly Archives: March 2017
NHS WORKERS are furious that they are to receive a measly 1% pay increase in 2017-18 – in reality another massive pay cut – with the Tory government announcing on Tuesday that it backs the recommendations of various NHS pay review bodies. Janet Davies, Chief Executive and General Secretary of...
FIERCE clashes broke out between the French CRS riot police and protesters for the third night in a row on Wednesday night. Demonstrators are furious after an incident took place on Sunday in which the French police banged on 56-year-old Chinese man Shaoyao Liu’s door. When he opened it, they...
PRIME Minister May in her letter to EU President Tusk has described the invoking of Article 50 to begin the UK’s withdrawal from the EU as a ‘historic moment from which there can be no turning back’, adding that ‘the referendum was a vote to restore, as we see...
THE trade unions are unanimous in their condemnation of the 1% pay award for NHS workers. Even the TUC, which considers PM May to be a ‘partner’, although it did not put out a statement on its website, through its press office told News Line: ‘Today’s report is a damning...
THE scale of civilian deaths in Mosul raises questions over rules of engagement being used by US-led coalition and Iraqi forces, says Amnesty International. Commenting on the US air strikes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday: ‘The tragedy that occurred in Mosul on March 17, when over 200...
PM May has written to EU President Tusk that ‘the referendum was a vote to restore, as we see it, our national self-determination.’ She added: ‘I hereby notify the European Council in accordance with Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from...
‘THIS IS nothing short of a scandal and reinforces the demand for nationalisation of our rail,’ the RMT union said on Monday. The train union was reacting angrily to the news that the South West Trains franchise has been awarded to Chinese state company MTR, which operates the Hong Kong...
SIR Keir Starmer, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary speaking at a Chatham House conference, has said that Labour will not support any Brexit deal negotiated by the government unless it meets Labour’s new ‘six tests’. Any deal must include a strong relationship with the EU and the same benefits the...
DRUGS are to be rationed under new proposals to strip back the care available to patients, including vital medicines for terminally ill patients, NHS England announced yesterday. The proposal includes an initial list of ten products that will be rationed or indeed outright banned in order to ‘save’...
NEWS IS quietly emerging from the top of the US banking fraternity that, despite the wild euphoria that has gripped the world financial centres since the election of Donald Trump, a massive crash is behind the scenes well underway. The bankers and speculators rallied when Trump was elected taking heart...
ON WEDNESDAY March 22, 2017 South Africa’s National Education Health & Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) had an extensive negotiating meeting with the Department of Social Development. NEHAWU has issued a list of demands which unless the employer meets means that the current strike will continue. The meeting was called...
WORKERS along America’s West Coast are mobilising for ‘strikes with the community’ this May Day in opposition to President Trump’s war on immigrants. Shop steward Tomas Mejia sensed something was different when 600 janitors streamed into the Los Angeles union hall on February 16 – far more than for a...
AFTER over a month of silence, the western media have had to acknowledge that hundreds of civilians are being killed in western Mosul by US air forces who are attacking occupied buildings which have a handful of ISIS snipers on the rooftops, by destroying the entire buildings, incinerating hundreds...
NHS Trusts performing poorly against the four-hour target could be placed in new ‘A&E special measures’ if their performance does not improve by June, reports the HSJ. Trusts are to be put into one of four groups based on their emergency department performance under the new approach, the letter from...
BY appointing David Friedman as the US ambassador to Israel, President Trump has unceremoniously stomped on any remaining illusions that he will restore genuine ‘peace talks’ in order to implement a ‘two-state solution’ in Palestine. The US Senate confirmed yesterday that the extreme Zionist right-winger Friedman is America’s new ambassador...
‘WE SIMPLY don’t have enough doctors working in emergency departments,’ the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said yesterday adding that, ‘our emergency departments are chronically underfunded’. The Royal College was reacting to the news which broke yesterday that regulators are to introduce an ‘A&E special measures’ regime. Such a...
AN ISRAELI police officer physically assaulted and injured several Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi Joz on Thursday morning, a video filmed by a witness shows. In the video, a plainclothes police officer verbally abuses a Palestinian truck driver – 50-year-old Mazen Rafaat Shweiki – after the...
THE DRIVE to raise the state pension age (SPA) even higher has stepped up with the issue of two separate reports which call for the government to push retirement age up to 70. One, an independent report authored by John Cridland, a former director-general of the bosses’ association the CBI,...
ON TUESDAY 21 March Labour shadow Chancellor John McDonnell asked an urgent question of the Chancellor, Hammond, who did not attend the session of parliament to make a reply. The question was ‘To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on allegations of money laundering...
THE BANK of America’s March survey has openly warned that another 2008-type worldwide crash is on the way. Its March survey polled 200 investors with $592bn in assets under management with 81% saying that they are overpriced. US stocks are now breaking record after record on the strength of President...
A NEW report released by the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign provides a scathing critique of the failure of PPPs across a range of sectors and serves as a warning against the use and abuse of PPPs the world over, says Public Services International global trade union federation. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)...
THE GOVERNMENT’S new National Funding Formula will see schools facing a ‘financial cliff edge’, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned yesterday. It warned that 1,000 schools will take a massive hit of seven per cent per pupil per year when ‘transitional protections’ run out in 2020. Labour leader Jeremy...
STAFF at the University of Brighton have called a series of strikes over an all round attack on teaching staff, downgrading some and sacking others. Staff will strike from 1.00pm on Friday 31 March and for two full days on 26 and 27 April. Members of the University and College Union...
WITH his tale that Unite leader McCluskey (currently up for re-election) intends to pay the union’s political cash over to the pro-Corbyn grass roots movement Momentum, to capture the party for the left, Labour’s deputy leader Watson has set out not only to try to organise the defeat of...
THE Care Quality Commission has warned all private ambulance providers that, during its inspections, it found ‘problems with the safety’ of the care they offer. The regulator said these ‘might not be isolated findings’, in a letter to independent providers sent today. Professor Mike Richards, the chief inspector of hospitals...
THE TORIES are ‘papering over the cracks in social care funding leaving services at breaking point,’ the GMB union said yesterday. The comments come as BBC Panorama programme aired last night revealed that a quarter of the country’s 2,500 home care providers were at risk of insolvency, and almost 70...
THE AFL-CIO US trade union federation has produced an analysis of President Donald Trump’s 2018 Budget. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the following statement regarding Trump’s proposed budget: ‘Working people in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn’t vote for a budget that slashes workforce training and...
THE TORY health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, yesterday announced that the government is to issue for consultation draft guidelines that, it claims, will end the blacklisting of NHS whistleblowers. The treatment of doctors and nurses who have raised serious issues about the practices carried out in some NHS trusts, practices that...
NHS services in England are now, facing head on, a ‘mission impossible’ to meet the standards required by the government, the NHS ‘Providers’ health bosses who run hospital, mental health and ambulance trusts have warned. NHS Providers predict its members, which account for nearly two-thirds of health spending, will get...
RAMALLAH – March 16, 2017 President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday welcomed current international and Arab efforts to advance a comprehensive and just peace between Palestinians and Israelis. ‘We welcome these efforts aimed to achieve comprehensive and just peace between us the Palestinians and the Israelis towards the realisation of...
NHS services in England are facing a ‘mission impossible’ to meet the standards required by the government, warns NHS Providers, which represents hospital, mental health and ambulance trust bosses. It said front-line services simply do not have enough money and predicts as a result, longer waits for hospital operations and...
EVERY school in England will see budget cuts before 2020, even after new funding plans are put into place, Education Policy Institute (EPI) research suggests. The Institute looks at the impact of the new national funding formula against the backdrop of financial pressures in schools. It finds even schools benefiting...
SYRIAN air defences shot down one of four Israeli warplanes targeting a military site near Palmyra on Friday, the General Command of the Syrian Army has announced. The incident happened when Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace in the eastern countryside of Homs near Palmyra in an overnight raid. The...
SOUTH African Police have investigated and cleared 87 of their own officers in relation to the August 2012 police killings of 34 Marikana miners. South African Police Service (SAPS) deputy national commissioner for human resource management, Lieutenant-General Bonang Mgwenya, told the South African Parliament’s police committee on Wednesday: ‘They were...
THE CASE of Alexander Blackman (the former marine sergeant sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013 for the murder of a wounded Afghan fighter) has provided another example of the war crimes committed by imperialism during their brutal occupation of the country. Blackman had his sentence reduced to manslaughter on appeal...
PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas’ meeting with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Jason Greenblatt and their remarks hit the front page headlines in local Palestinian dailies. US President Donald Trump’s special envoy met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday at his office in Ramallah city in the central occupied West...
FOUR-HOUR waits in A&E at north Middlesex Hospital have increased by 380% while at the Royal Free Hospital in London, four-hour waits in A&E have increased by 366%. Both of these extremely concerning rises, the highest in the country, are a direct result of the closure of the A&E services...
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy on Monday discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Netanyahu met and discussed settlement construction in the oPT and ways of renewing...
GOVERNMENT plans to increase National Insurance levels for self-employed people – announced in the Budget last week – have been dropped by the Tory Chancellor and the Tory government after a major revolt inside the Tory party against its unelected leader and arrogant Chancellor. Hammond had faced a furious backlash...
‘HOSPITAL doctors are blowing the whistle on sliding standards in patient care – wards are full and without the staff to cope,’ the leader of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said yesterday. Responding to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) report, NHS reality check: Delivering care under pressure, which...
BARNSLEY Central MP Dan Jarvis has backed a GMB campaign against the privatisation of Barnsley hospital. Demonstrators are expected to gather outside the hospital today in anger at a deal which raises a potential conflict of interest for the directors. The trust which runs the hospital lost a massive £16.2...
A COALITION of seven debt charities has called on local authorities to ‘stamp out’ bad debt collection practices by bullying bailiffs acting as a law unto themselves. AdviceUK, Christians Against Poverty, Citizens Advice, Money Advice Trust, StepChange Debt Charity, The Children’s Society and Z2K said they ‘all see the impact...