Monthly Archives: October 2018
Hundreds of members of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) marched to the Cape Town Civic Centre to deliver a memorandum of demands to city officials last Thursday morning. The march was organised to draw attention to the grievances of firefighters who are ‘overworked and underpaid’. Taxify,...
THE PALESTINIAN Central Council met in Ramallah on Sunday and Monday and, after deliberations on important matters for the Palestinian people, it made a number of very important decisions including that Palestine suspend its recognition of the state of Israel. On President Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ – the plan...
HUNDREDS of Uber drivers descended on the Royal Court of Justice yesterday as Uber appealed once more, attempting to overturn the historic landmark ruling two years ago that Uber drivers are not ‘self employed’ but workers with rights. The result of the appeal is expected in the next few days....
PALESTINIAN prisoner in Israeli jails Khader Adnan, who has been on an open-ended hunger strike for 57 days in protest at being detained without charge or trial, has also stopped drinking water, the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission said on Sunday. ‘Prisoner Khader Adnan has decided to step up his...
TORY chancellor Philip Hammond made a climb down in his budget speech yesterday to Theresa May, but there was no climb down over continuing the austerity attacks on workers and keeping the hated Universal Credit system. In the run up to the budget, Hammond appeared on interviews where he spelt...
TORY Chancellor Hammond, yesterday in his budget claimed to jeers: ‘the era of austerity is finally coming to an end.’ This is the opposite to PM May’s assurances that ‘austerity has ended’. He said that ‘under this Conservative government austerity will come to an end but discipline will...
‘No Justice, No Peace! Who are the murderers – Police are the murderers!’ shouted over 300 bereaved relatives and supporters as they made their way from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street on Saturday. The marchers were taking part in the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) 20th annual march to...
As Putin, Merkel, Macron and Erdogan were meeting in Istanbul on Saturday evening to discuss the future of Syria, Israeli planes were bombing Gaza schools and seeking to terrorise the people of the region. This new Israeli push is being carried out in conjunction with the US and its Arab...
REGIONALISING public sector pay would exacerbate the NHS recruitment crisis and leave parts of the country unable to provide safe care, the leader of the UK’s RCN nursing union told the Chancellor ahead of today’s Budget. REGIONALISING public sector pay would exacerbate the NHS recruitment crisis and leave parts of...
AS Northern and South Western Railway guards strike again this weekend, rail union RMT has raised new safety warnings with the regulator over the use of inexperienced, under-trained managers on fat bounty payments acting as guards to try and break the action. RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: ‘Members on...
FIVE arrested striking MyCiTi bus drivers were charged with public violence and released on R1,000 bail each on Wednesday at the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court. Patrick Mabindisa, Luzuko Memani, Simthembile Stephens, Tembela Mahlatshana and Baxolele Mtengi appeared before magistrate M.A.F Mafanga. She postponed the matter to 9 November for further...
MORE than 1.2 million people are on Universal Credit, while more than 100 new Jobcentres will be operating it by Christmas. Universal Credit is being rolled out to about 100,000 people a month, leaving in its wake a mass of evictions, and homelessness, poverty and food bank use. In some...
MORE THAN 170,000 workers marched through Melbourne, Australia on Tuesday, while tens of thousands of others marched through Sydney, Wollongong, Gladstone, Cairns, Mackay, Darwin, Rockhampton, and Townsville and other towns and cities, fighting for a living wage. Four out of five workers are not getting pay rises that keep up...
AUDIT Scotland, the public spending watchdog for Scotland, has issued a damning report on the NHS funding crisis, which it states is in a critical condition. Although focusing on the crisis of the NHS in Scotland, this report could have been written about the financial debt crisis that is...
AS Primary schools and nurseries across Glasgow stayed closed on the second day of the massive 8,000-strong 48-hour equal pay strike yesterday, the SNP-run council’s solicitor sent a letter to the GMB threatening legal action under the Tory anti-union laws. The SNP council leaders made the threat after 600 binmen...
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates strongly condemned the Israeli forces’ dismantling of two educational caravans in Ibziq village, in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tubas, on Tuesday. Israeli forces dismantled and seized educational caravans belonging to the school of the late Marwan Majali, known as...
ITALY is now on a collision course with the EU. The European Commission has issued an ultimatum insisting that the country’s budget plan does not comply with its fiscal recommendations and must be ditched. It has given Italy three weeks to make amendments or else face huge fines. The conflict...
PARENTS, councillors and education unions descended on the Department of Education yesterday to demand that children with special needs are not left high and dry due to savage Tory cuts. Six education unions: NEU, NAHT, GMB, Unison, Unite, ASCL joined the School Cuts coalition which demands proper funding of Special...
TEACHERS and parents at The John Roan secondary school in Greenwich are determined to defeat an academy order issued by the Tory government calling for the school to join the University Schools Trust. Despite Tory forced academisation leading to an outbreak of ‘zombie multi-academy trusts’, leaving schools and pupils in...
THE TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that all those behind the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi should be brought to justice, and stand trial in Istanbul. Erdogan also noted that ‘all those who played a role in the murder’ have to face punishment. The ‘very savage murder’...
SYRIANS in the occupied Golan Heights have demonstrated and burned Israeli election ballots in a symbolic dismissal of local council elections and ‘a policy of judaisation’ administered by the Zionist regime. The demonstrators, who described the elections as an Israeli effort to legitimise its occupation, raised Syrian flags on Friday...
THE TORIES are determined to put an end to trade union-negotiated across the board pay increases for all public sector workers and replace national wage negotiations with performance-related pay. In July this year, the Tories formally ended the 1% pay cap for public sector workers in the face of a...
HUNDREDS of tower blocks across the UK are be at risk of collapse, threatening multiple disasters on the scale of the tragedy at Grenfell Tower where 72 men, women and children lost their lives. 575 tower blocks, home to at least 100,000 people, were built using ‘large panel system’ construction....
THE NATIONAL Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA) said it will escalate the strike by plastics sector workers after the Labour Court in Johannesburg ruled the strike legal last Friday, and that the employers in the sector could not undercut the union and its members’ right to strike. This came...
SIR Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary was asked by Andrew Marr on his show yesterday morning: ‘700,000 people marching in London yesterday. If you hadn’t been shadow Brexit secretary you would have been with them, wouldn’t you? ''Your neighbours, your friends, you would have been...
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of ‘Remainers’ marshalled by the likes of billionaire George Soros and other speculators set out on Saturday to try to create the conditions for a parliamentary coup against the 2016 referendum result. This was when the masses of the people took advantage of a referendum, called by...
AS MORE and more evidence emerges about the gruesome nature of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the international community to stop appeasing the Saudi regime. Converging reports from Turkish and international media and video footage indicate that the journalist was...
TORY PM May’s latest capitulation to the European Union over Brexit has been met with furious anger from Brexiteers and others in her own party. She has conceded to extending the transitional period by a year, whetting the appetite of the EU which is now demanding an indefinite backstop...
THE UNITE union will be making ‘a vigorous and well-argued response’ to the consultation on the future of wholly owned subsidiaries set up by NHS trusts and designed to avoid paying tax. Unite, with 100,000 members in the health service, has been at the forefront of the campaign to highlight...
At a demonstration outside the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government on Wednesday, Fuel Poverty Action handed in a letter to the Secretary of State, the wording of which was signed by over 100 different organisations, MPs and councillors. Earlier this month the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) joined...
ON WEDNESDAY this week, the Tory government whipped its MPs to vote down a motion from the Labour Party calling for the release of official documents which detailed the impact of Universal Credit and an assessment of the devastating effect it has had on those already forced onto it. Last...
OVER 2,000 FE lecturers, staff and students marched through central London yesterday demanding fair funding for colleges. They demanded fair pay for FE lecturers, shouting: ‘The money is there, we want our share!’ Jeremy Corbyn addressed the rally in Parliament Square where he pledged: ‘The next Labour government will introduce...
STRIKING members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) members in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) held a mass demonstration on Tuesday to hand over a list of demands to employers in the plastics sector. The union demonstrated in KZN because the majority of plastic companies are situated in...
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has cautioned against rushing to blame Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince over the disappearance and butchering of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, at the hands of servants of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Crown Prince is...
RYANAIR has made a ‘declaration of war’ unions said after it embarked on a campaign of closures and ‘fleet reductions’. This, according to pilot and cabin crew unions, is a form of ‘punishment’ for the recent strikes across Europe. Ryanair has announced it is closing two bases from 5th November...
LABOUR leader Corbyn, in his response to PM May’s Monday update to the House of Commons ahead of this week’s European Council, made it clear what direction he wants the Labour Party to take. He rallied his supporters with the traditional Tory battle cry, usually put before announcing savage cuts,...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad stressed the importance of the victories achieved in combatting terrorism in Syria and Iraq when he received Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and an accompanying delegation in Damascus on Monday. The meeting discussed the latest developments at the Syrian and Iraqi arenas and the regional and international...
THE POTENTIAL massacre of civilians while trying to retake the last major stronghold of anti-government militants in Syria – namely Idlib Province – is a red line for Iran, says the Iranian chief negotiator in the peace process for Syria. Hossein Jaberi Ansari, senior assistant to the Iranian foreign minister...
AT LAST month’s Labour Party conference, shadow chancellor John McDonnell floated the policy of a future Labour government introducing an ‘inclusive ownership Fund’ under which companies would be forced to give shares to their workers. Yesterday, Royal Mail workers got a taste of what share owning really means. In 2013...
‘LABOUR’S plan is for Britain and the European Union (EU) to negotiate a permanent customs union to protect jobs and manufacturing,’ Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn insisted in the House of Commons yesterday. He was speaking in Parliament after PM May made a statement on the Brexit negotiations with the EU,...
‘WHAT steps will they take in response to concerns over the level of toxins found at the Grenfell Tower site and calls for survivors, firefighters and local residents to undergo immediate tests to monitor any damage to their DNA?’ Labour peer Lord Kennedy of Southwark asked in the House...
TEN Palestinians, including three children, were killed and 882 others have been injured by Israeli forces at the Gaza border during the past two weeks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). Friday, 28th September, recorded the highest fatality toll in a single day...
NOW that the ex-Brexit negotiator Davis has called for the Cabinet to rise up against the May government’s permanent Customs Union, and her plan to postpone leaving the EU indefinitely, Tory Brexiteers have run out of room for manoeuvre, and have been left with only one option, if...