Monthly Archives: March 2017
CURRENTLY parallel with the peace talks in Astana, uninvited Turkish and US forces are operating in Syria in a move to attempt to dictate peace terms to President Assad, who they have been unable to remove by force of arms. The US, with up to 1,000 troops and...
‘I WAS ARRESTED on that day at Orgreave. It was a really terrible day. There were thousands and thousands of police, I was walking down with a bloke who was an ex-soldier, and he swore blind that they were soldiers.’ Kevin Horne, from Barnburgh Colliery, was talking to News Line...
THE LEADER of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Nicola Sturgeon, dropped a bombshell yesterday with her announcement that she intends to push through a vote in the Scottish Parliament demanding that the Tory government give its permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence. The SNP with the support of...
TRAIN drivers and guards were on strike in three parts of the country simultaneously yesterday, with Southern, Northern and Merseyside RMT drivers and guards out together against the removal of the guards from the train. The reduced time table that Merseyside attempted to impose collapsed as other drivers refused to...
‘I WILL now take the steps necessary to make sure that Scotland will have the choice at the end of this process,’ Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday calling for a second referendum on Scotland leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an independent country. The referendum, she...
REPUBLICAN leaders in Congress are working on plans to cut health benefits for tens of millions of people. The harms from these cuts are likely to have the biggest impact on women, both for their own health benefits and as they try to manage health care for their families. Every...
THE Brexit Secretary Davis yesterday urged MPs not to ‘tie the prime minister’s hands’ and to defeat the two House of Lords amendments to the Article 50 motion on the UK leaving the EU. Davis emphasised: ‘What we can’t have is either Houses of Parliament reversing the decision of...
TORY Brexit Secretary David Davis yesterday urged MPs to reject the two House of Lords amendments to the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. One guarantees a ‘meaningful’ parliamentary vote on the final exit package. Davis urged MPs not to ‘tie the prime minister’s hands’, claiming the government was...
ANGRY head teachers heckled Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday as she told the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) conference about government plans for new grammar schools. There were cries of ‘rubbish’ and ‘no, no’ from delegates in Birmingham as she said selective schools could close the achievement gap...
THE TORIES have stepped up their war on youth, pushing through legislation last Friday which strips all young unemployed people under the age of 21 of housing benefit. This vicious move will force youth to either live at home or live on the streets. From 1st of April, 18 to...
AMNESTY International has corroborated new evidence the Saudi Arabia-led coalition recently fired banned cluster munitions in Yemen. The Brazilian-manufactured rockets struck three residential areas and surrounding farmland in the middle of Sa’da city, injuring two civilians and causing material damage. To date, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented...
IN REFUSING to lift the 1% public sector pay cap, chancellor Philip Hammond is condemning ‘just managing’ civil servants to wage cuts of up to 20%, the Public and Commercial Services union said on Wednesday in response to the budget. The union highlighted new research that shows from 2010 to...
THE headlines in the bourgeois press yesterday howled about Tory chancellor, Philip Hammond, breaking a cast-iron Tory election manifesto pledge that there would be no tax increases under a Tory government. What these papers didn’t say is that Tory pledges are only sacrosanct when it comes to implementing privatisation or...
CHANCELLOR Hammond announced an extra £325 million in yesterday’s budget to fast-track some of the 44 hated STPs (Sustainability and Transformation Plans) of Tory NHS cuts and closures before the end of the year. Hammond announced £100m funding for 100 new ‘triage’ projects to turn sick people away from A&E...
WITH British capitalism on its knees and the Tory Party and the ruling class split from stem to stern over the European Union, Tory Chancellor Hammond yesterday began his budget speech in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mode stating, ‘I report today on an economy that has continued to...
REPUBLICAN leaders in Congress are working on plans to cut health benefits for tens of millions of people, warned the AFL-CIO trade union federation. It said on Tuesday: ‘The harms from these cuts are likely to have the biggest impact on women, both for their own health benefits and as...
THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is ‘alarmed at the NHS England Staff Survey 2016 which shows the immense pressure they are under, particularly due to understaffing.’ The RCN said yesterday: ‘Almost half (47%) believe there is not “enough staff at their organisation for them to do their job properly”....
AN Arab town council in Jatt, in Israel (occupied Palestine), has been forced to change a street name called after the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, when the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamen Netanyahu said that streets in Israel cannot be ‘named after murderers of Israelis and Jews’. Mohammed Watad from...
THE South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) endorses the Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) taking place from 6th-12th March, 2017. The week focuses on Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, particularly women and children, who are incarcerated under extremely appalling conditions with beatings, insults, threats, sexually explicit harassment and sexual violence,...
AFTER weeks of speculation it was finally confirmed yesterday that the giant but bankrupt General Motors was pulling out of Europe, selling off its Vauxhall and Opel plants to the French PSA Group, who own Peugeot and Citroen, for £1.9 billion. The management of PSA were quick to rush out...
A FLEET of Israeli bulldozers and military vehicles crossed the border fence into the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday and flattened private Palestinian lands, as the Tel Aviv regime’s illegal construction activities continue in the occupied Palestinian territories. At least four Israeli armoured Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, accompanied by a...
DOCTORS are calling for an extra £10.3bn to be put in to the NHS, ahead of Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond’s budget tomorrow. This, doctor’s union the BMA warns, is essential as ‘an entire system is under such strain’ that ‘services are truly at breaking point.’ BMA council chair Mark Porter has...
UP TO 100,000 health workers, trade unionists, students and youth marched through London to defend the NHS on Saturday. There were balloons from Unison, Unite, PCS and GMB on the march, along with thousands of placards, as well as banners from local campaigns. The Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists...
SATURDAY’S 100,000-strong march to defend the NHS from the accelerating Tory drive to destroy it showed once again that the masses are ready to do battle to defend the greatest gain of the working class – the NHS – brought in in 1948 by the Attlee government, after millions...
TORY Chancellor Philip Hammond has signalled more savage cuts in Wednesday’s Budget, saying he will not be having a public sector ‘spending spree’. Writing in the Sunday Times, he said that calls for ‘massive borrowing to fund huge spending sprees’ were ‘reckless, unsustainable and unfair on our young people...
NEW research by NUT and the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) using DfE data shows that, under current government school funding policy, the 1,000 schools with the highest number of children with free school meals are facing much higher cuts in funding per pupil than schools generally. The NUT (National...
‘SLASH, Trash and Privatise’ – this is how the purpose of the Tories’ 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) is now correctly understood. Drawn up in secret, the 44 STP plans are a blueprint for putting an end to the NHS in Britain, smashing it up and selling off each...
‘IT IS CLEAR that patients’ lives are being put at risk, but the solution is not to slash, trash and privatise through the NHS England’s STP programme,’ Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe said yesterday. He was speaking after Prof Sir Mike Richards, the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) chief...
THE NHS is standing on a ‘burning platform’ is the stark assessment of Professor Sir Mike Richards, the Care Quality Commission’s chief inspector of hospitals. His dire assessment of the crisis facing the NHS follows an inspection carried out by the commission into 136 acute non-specialist trusts and 18 specialist...
A YOUNG Palestinian man was shot and killed by an Israeli settler in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron on Wednesday afternoon. The Israeli army claimed that an ‘attacker armed with a knife entered a house’ in the illegal settlement outpost of Havat More in the Masafer Yatta...
YESTERDAY Unite leader McCluskey was at the Bridgend plant in south Wales to address the three shifts of workers at separate meetings on the issue of the defence of their jobs. Unite said about his visit that he was to call on Ford ‘to end the agony of...
THE PALESTINIAN cabinet decided on Tuesday to hold municipal elections on May 13 only in the West Bank with the exclusion of the Gaza Strip, where the cabinet said it will not be possible to hold elections at the scheduled date. ‘The cabinet decided to hold elections for local councils...
The POA (Prison Officers Association) has condemned an injunction secured by the Tory government from judges banning its industrial action planned for yesterday. ‘The POA Executive on behalf of the membership condemn the Secretary of State for hiding behind the High Court, instead of working with the Union to alleviate...
THE latest ANC government budget entrenches the dominance of ‘white capital’ while intent on creating a ‘black capitalist’ class, says Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary. In a statement, Jim said: ‘The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) is not surprised at the budget which was delivered by...
TRADE unions yesterday slammed Tory chancellor Phillip Hammond’s instruction to government departments to find spending cuts of up to 6% as part of plans to save £3.5bn by 2020. The Treasury’s demand for government departments to find the 6% cuts threatens 25,000 jobs, warned the Public and Commercial Services union....
ON MONDAY, in the House of Commons, Health Secretary Hunt was asked an urgent question as to why he had covered up for, and refused to make public, the ‘mislaying’ of 708,000 items of correspondence by a private company between hospitals and GPs concerning the health problems of their...