Monthly Archives: July 2017
INTERNATIONAL pressure on the Palestinian Authority to halt payments to the families of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including those convicted of attacks, could trigger political crisis, rights groups say. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is caught between pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration and a potential backlash from Palestinians,...
SOARING university tuition fees, rents in student halls being hiked up, the complete removal of the student grant and the spiralling cost of living have created a perfect storm that has driven down university applications by as much as 4%, Ucas figures show. That is 25,000 less...
THE Royal College of Midwives (RCM) yesterday launched its ‘Fair Pay Overdue’ campaign, demanding an end to the public sector pay cap and a fully funded pay rise for midwives, maternity support workers and other NHS staff. The launch came as the RCM’s Activists Conference took place in Bristol. The...
BOSTON’S first nurses’ strike in 30 years began on Wednesday after a last-ditch negotiating session failed to resolve the disagreements between the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) and Tufts Medical Centre. The 1,200 Tufts nurses represented by the MNA kicked off their strike at 7 am. It is now...
‘CUTS like this signify a huge step backwards for public health, and will have a damaging impact on people’s health and wellbeing, inevitably costing the NHS far more in the long term,’ Dr Iain Kennedy, BMA public health committee chair said yesterday. He was responding to new analysis from The...
EARLY on Wednesday morning Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinian youth, a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old, and injured at least two others during a violent raid into Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank. An Israeli army spokesperson alleged that during the ‘operation’ a Palestinian fighter...
IRAQ: Battle between US-led coalition, Iraqi forces and Islamic State creates civilian catastrophe in west Mosul, says Amnesty International. The main findings of its report published on Tuesday At any cost: The civilian catastrophe in West Mosul, Iraq, are: • Report sheds light on the scale of death, injury and suffering...
OVER 150 striking British Airways Mixed Fleet cabin crew held a photo-call outside Parliament yesterday, where they were joined by a number of Labour MPs. One of the strikers, Emma, told News Line: ‘The strike is going really well, it’s gaining momentum. More and more people are joining all the...
‘WE ARE determined to have a pay rise,’ Unite shop steward Melissa Manso declared at a lively morning picket line outside the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, yesterday. Yesterday was the first of a seven-day strike by domestics and porters employed by contractor SERCO at four Bart’s Health...
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has condemned UK war crimes in both the Yemen and in Iraq. In the Yemen UK-supplied weaponry to Saudi Arabia has been used to kill and maim tens of thousands of civilians, with many, many more starving, and with over 100,000 struck down by cholera. In Iraq, the...
‘THE GUPTA family is the immediate threat to South Africa’s struggling working class,’ South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Monday. Vavi, who was addressing hundreds of workers at a National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) rally in Rustenburg in the North...
TRAIN workers at three Rail companies across the country, Northern, Southern and Merseyrail were on strike simultaneously yesterday. Northern rail staff were on the last day of a three-day strike, while Merseyrail staff were on strike for the day and also plan action on 23 July. RMT union members at...
THIS pathetic minority Tory ‘government’ is so weak that Theresa May is forced today to make a speech begging for the Labour Party and other opposition groups to come to her aid and keep her in power. Her speech is a sign of the acute desperation gripping May and the...
TENS of Palestinian children being treated at a Gaza City hospital for cystic fibrosis are facing possible imminent death, relatives and medical sources have said, amid what rights groups described as the worst medication crisis the besieged Gaza Strip has seen in years, stemming from debilitating budget cuts by...
A WEEK-LONG strike across four London hospitals begins this morning as hundreds of low paid cleaners, porters and security guards working for private company SERCO walk out from 5.30am as the battle against low pay escalates. The week long strike follows a solid three-day strike last week at Barts Health...
THE G20 has concluded with the imperialist powers at each others’ throats after being under permanent siege by tens of thousands of anti-capitalist youth. The G20 began just after US President Trump had visited Poland where he eulogised Polish nationalism and signed a separate deal to supply Poland with gas...
A GROUP OF women’s committees in the besieged Gaza Strip organised a sit-in on Thursday to demand equal pay between men and women in the coastal enclave amid soaring unemployment rates compounded by Israel’s decade-long siege on the territory. A member of the Central Committee of the Palestinian People’s Party...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test will have ‘consequences’, while launching into a tirade against Russia for supporting Syria. Speaking at a press conference in the Polish capital of Warsaw on Wednesday, Trump said he was considering a ‘severe’ response to Pyongyang’s...
ZERO-hours contracts, zero rights, zero future: this is the vision the Tories have for a ‘modern’ hire and fire workforce, where the Uber model is brought into every field of work. The so called ‘Gig economy’ seeks to return to the days before there were trade unions, to the beginnings...
SINCE being established in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement – better known as NAFTA – has triggered job losses, depressed wages and shifted more power to corporations. Now, the Trump administration has notified Congress it plans to ‘modernise’ the horrible trade deal, giving working families an historic opportunity...
IN AN OPEN declaration that it is prepared to plunge the world into a nuclear war US imperialism has threatened that it ‘is prepared to use the full range of our capabilities to defend ourselves and our allies’ against North Korea. These words were spoken by the US ambassador to...
UNITE union members marched and rallied at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, east London Tuesday lunchtime on the first day of a 48-hour strike to demand a 3% pay rise and to defend their pensions. Unite said this will be followed by a seven-day stoppage starting on Tuesday 11 July...
A REPORT by the Henry Jackson Society, published yesterday, named Saudi Arabia as the main foreign promoter of Islamic extremism in Britain, stating that there is a ‘clear and growing link’ between funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and the growth of jihadist terrorist groups in the...
Unite, the UK’s largest construction union, announced on Monday a dramatic escalation in strike action as part of a long running dispute with private contractor Mears and joint venture company Manchester Working (operated by Mears) over pay differentials and attacks on terms and conditions. unite battles mears over £3,500 differential The...
AUSTRIA is ready to deploy troops and armour at the Brenner Pass – the border crossing with Italy – if the influx of refugees to Italy continues to grow. Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil, announcing the measures, said four Pandur armoured personnel carriers have been sent to the Tyrol region...
‘WE WANT a pay rise!’ said over 200 striking Bart’s NHS Trust ancillary workers employed by privateer SERCO at the trust’s four London hospitals. The Unite union members marched and rallied at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, east London yesterday lunchtime on the first day of a 48-hour strike to...
THE ISRAELI public prosecutor for the Jerusalem district has filed ‘a precedent-setting’ civil lawsuit against the widow and young children of Fadi al-Qunbar – who was shot dead by Israeli forces in January after he drove a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers, killing four – for some...
CLADDING on 181 tower blocks in 51 areas of the country have now failed fire safety tests. Meanwhile it also emerged yesterday that there are no sprinklers in 300 Scottish tower blocks. Right across the UK there are hundreds of potential disasters waiting to happen. Reports confirm that the Grenfell Tower inferno,...
THE contemptuous treatment of the survivors of the fire that killed 80 people at least has been sickening. Last week it emerged that those who had been placed in emergency hotel accommodation had been informed by Tory run Kensington and Chelsea council that they would have to leave by 4pm...
SATURDAY’S massive turnout for the trade union sponsored mass demonstration with its lead banner declaring ‘Not One Day More – Tories out’ has spread shock waves through the ruling class and also the trade union bureaucracy. Some capitalist observers managed to count just 10,000 on the march – if that...
RESPONDING to the latest Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) figures showing more nurses leaving than joining the profession, Janet Davies, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the RCN said: ‘These figures are the starkest warning yet that nurses have put up with too much for too long. ‘Our members have...
A KENSINGTON and Chelsea council meeting on Thursday evening erupted into anger as Tory council leader Nick Paget-Brown shut the meeting down five minutes before it was due to begin. He stated: ‘I am told that the press are here as a result of a legal intervention and that therefore...
IN A SPEECH in London last Tuesday, the chair of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Janet Yellen, announced to a disbelieving world that the world’s banks are ‘very much stronger’, going even further and grandly proclaiming that there would be no more financial crisis in ‘our lifetime’. Even bourgeois economic...
‘Israel may be able to confiscate our money, but it cannot confiscate our dignity.’ So says Issa Qaraqe, Head of the Commission of Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs for the Palestinian Authority (PA). In a written statement, Qaraqe added: ‘It seems that Israel, having completed its racist colonisation project, began...