Monthly Archives: April 2017
AFTER Tuesday’s talks with the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella, President Putin spoke about the situation after the US’s 59 cruise missile attack on Syria. Putin said: ‘Now about whether new attacks are possible or not. We have information from a variety of sources that such provocations (I...
STRIKING South African social workers have barricaded the entrances to care centres and are vowing not to leave until their demands – an immediate rise in pay to a living wage and decent working conditions – are met. The social workers are members of the National Health, Education and Allied...
AN OVERWHELMING 96.4% of college lecturers in Scotland in the EIS union voted for strike action yesterday after promises of ‘fair play’ were broken while lecturers are left on a wage which is falling further and further behind the rising cost of living. EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan said: ‘This...
THIRTEEN-year-old Chloe Narbonne would have died if it wasn’t for a revolutionary pioneering operation that gave her a new artificial heart, all thanks to the complex children’s heart surgery unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, south west London, whose services now face the axe because of Tory...
IN ENGLAND last year 928 adult social care workers a day quit their jobs, according to an analysis of data from the charity ‘Skills for Care’ carried out by the BBC. 338,520 adult social care workers out of a workforce of 1.3 million left their jobs, with 60% leaving this...
MUSIC, languages, drama, PE, design technology and art, as well as vocational subjects including engineering, construction, and childcare, have all being axed from secondary schools’ curriculums because of Tory cuts, a damning new poll of teachers released yesterday by the NUT and ATL has shown. The Association of Teachers and...
THE Bank of England, the UKs central bank and guardian of the country’s banking system, along with being responsible for the running of British capitalism, has been implicated in being up to its neck in the Libor rigging scandal first revealed in 2012. Libor is the London inter-bank lending rate,...
THE MURDEROUS US strike on the Shayrat Syrian air base last Friday crossed ‘red lines’ and any new aggression will be met by a powerful response, a joint command centre of forces of Russia, Iran and militias supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad declared on Sunday. ‘What America waged in...
BRITISH Tory and Labour leaders fell in with their US masters’ drive to war yesterday. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in an interview aired yesterday on CNN that until Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is out of power, she doesn’t see a political solution to the conflict...
A STRIKE by doctors over private medical universities gripped Sri Lanka on Friday. The country-wide strike action was launched by the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). Executive member Dr. Nalinda Herath said several trade unions have joined the strike action. Dr. Herath also said that the strike will not affect...
LAST Friday’s attack by US planes on the Syrian airfield of al-Shayrat was not a one-off military exercise to teach the Syrians a lesson, but the opening shot in a drive to war against the Syrian people and Russia. This has become crystal clear in the few days after this...
PRESIDENT Trump in his televised statement on Thursday night insisted that launching a 59-strong cruise missile attack on Syria was ‘in the national security interest of the United States’, meaning the US ruling class. The act of war followed on from the deadlock in the UN Security Council where the...
THE NUT (National Union of Teachers) and the CFHF (Cystic Fibrosis Holiday Fund) have condemned the fining of parents for taking their children out of school for a holiday during term time. Commenting on Thursday on the High Court ruling against parent Jon Platt said, ‘To attend regularly no longer...
RUSSIA has submitted its draft resolution to the UN Security Council about the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun on Tuesday, Fedor Strzhizhovsky, press secretary of Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, told reporters on Wednesday. At the emergency meeting convened by the UN...
THE DEATHS of dozens of civilians including young children in Syrian town Khan Sheikhoun has been seized on by imperialism as a weapon to try and snatch victory from a massive defeat. They have rushed to condemn the Syrian army and president Assad as ‘war criminals’ who used banned chemical...
PATIENT confidentiality has been breached! Immigration centres, police stations and prisons have been given full access to hundreds of thousands of patients’ medical records, in what may well constitute and illegal breach of the Data Protection Act. A person’s medical records are by law completely confidential and up until now...
THE SYRIAN government absolutely rejects the allegations ‘that the army used in the past or uses now or will use in the future any chemical weapons and we condemn using such weapons,’ Deputy Prime Minister Walid al-Moallem said yesterday. Addressing journalists in a press conference on Thursday he said...
FORMER Labour Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has announced that he is to appeal against his two-year suspension from standing for office or representing the Labour Party at any level. Livingstone was suspended under rule 2.1.8, which says that ‘no member of the party shall engage in conduct which in...
YOUNG people are being left to suffer, with 34 per cent of the country’s children’s centres slashed since 2010, says the GMB. ‘Unwarranted’ closure of services up and down the country leaves a ‘ticking timebomb’ for nation’s youth according to the union. Figures obtained by the Labour Party under a...
PM MAY makes a lot of noise about her concern for the ‘just about managing’, ie the middle classes in crisis-ridden Britain. In fact, she is seeking to prop up the Tory base while she wages a ruthless war on the working class and the poor of a type...
PM MAY has just visited Jordan and is visiting Saudi Arabia to emphasise that the UK is, once again, trying to restore past glories and be a major power East of Suez. Her visit marks the second anniversary of the terrible bombardment by Saudi forces that has led to...
THE RMT has issued a warning that the privateer Merseyrail’s planned Grand National scabbing operation will ‘rip up the safety rule book’. Rail union RMT warned on Monday that a scabbing operation set up by Merseyrail to run a skeleton service on Grand National day this coming Saturday, will...
ANXIETY, stress and depression were to blame for nearly half the sick days taken by doctors in central Bristol last year, according to new figures obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. The new junior doctors contract has been imposed by the Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Doctors came...
AFTER Fatah-affiliated Palestinians held in Israeli prisons organised a mass hunger strike to take place on Palestinian Prisoners Day later this month, scores of Palestinian prisoners from across the political spectrum have pledged their involvement in the strike. The strike, led by head of the party’s central committee Marwan Barghouthi,...
THE TORY government has launched an all-out assault on the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, slashing disabled people’s money, cutting child tax credits while abolishing housing benefits for the under 21s, all in the same week! The four key attacks to the tax and benefits system coming...
THE Tories are continuing to lash out at the working class and the poor. Last week housing charity Shelter revealed that new government figures on homelessness show that in the last year alone, 59,260 households were accepted as homeless by their local council – a rise of 22% over the...
MORE than 6,000 trade unionists and NHS supporters marched through Leeds last Saturday afternoon against Tory government cuts and the privatisation of the NHS throughout Yorkshire and the north of England. Health workers and their supporters from as far as Grantham and Stafford as well as from across Yorkshire, marched...
LAST Friday night, a racist gang attacked and seriously injured a teenage asylum seeker in Croydon. The Kurdish Iranian boy, age 17, was waiting with two friends at a bus stop when he was set upon by about eight racists. The attackers asked the boy where he was from before...
UNITED Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl affirmed on Friday that his recent visit to Syria will contribute to drawing the attention of the world to the situation of the Palestinian refugees during the current difficult circumstances in Syria. He...
THE HEAD of NHS England, Simon Stevens, yesterday released the report ‘Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View’, a report that makes it crystal clear that the next step for the NHS, as far as he and the Tories are concerned, is nothing short of the total...
THE decision of the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) to appoint former Cameron spin doctor Andy Coulson to provide PR advice to the company has been described as ‘gobsmacking’ by the National Union of Journalists NUJ). The announcement came on Thursday as TMG also confirmed plans to outsource editorial production...
OPERATIONS and drugs will be rationed in a ‘trade-off with improving care in other areas’, Head of NHS England Simon Stevens said yesterday, outlining the alleged progress made on his Five Year Forward Plan launched in 2014. He refused to demand more money from the government for the NHS...