Monthly Archives: March 2019
BRITAIN is providing ‘engineering support’ for UK-supplied aircraft operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force, responsible for killing innocent people in Yemen, a British government minister has revealed. Armed Forces Minister Mark Lancaster was responding to a question in Parliament from Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, on military personnel seconded to...
THE GAP in infant mortality rates between English local authorities narrowed between 1999-2010, but that trend has been reversed since 2011 as a result of Tory austerity measures, a new report suggests. Under the Labour governments from 1999-2010 inequalities between the most deprived areas of England and the rest of the...
IRAN’S President Hassan Rouhani says, despite all the pressure exerted on the Iranian nation by the United States – especially through the imposition of unilateral economic sanctions – Iranians remain steadfast and resistant and continue to progress. Rouhani made the remarks while addressing the inaugural ceremony for phases 13, 22,...
LAST weekend the two largest German banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, entered merger talks in a last desperate measure to delay a banking collapse of massive proportions. Although the government claimed it would approve such a merger – despite concerns that anything up to 40,000 jobs could be lost –...
INTERSERVE was handed £660 million worth of public contracts in the months before facing collapse, GMB Union has revealed. The company is set to go into administration after its largest shareholder, the US hedge fund Coltrane, opposed restructuring plans last week. According to the Tussell Group, a data provider on UK...
THE United Arab Emirates has denied Lebanon’s embassy officials the right to meet with eleven Lebanese citizens arrested in the Persian Gulf state over ties to the resistance movement Hezbollah, a media report says. According to a report by Al-Akhbar, the UAE is blocking diplomatic efforts to secure the release...
PM MAY yesterday made an appeal for MPs to ‘stand together as democrats and patriots’, to support her withdrawal deal. This is after her resolution of last Thursday to extend Article 50 and delay Brexit was carried by 403 to 202 votes. However, almost two-thirds of her own Tory MPs,...
OVER 10,000 school youth from around the South East of England descended on London’s Parliament Square yesterday shouting: ‘Solution not pollution! We want change!’ They were part of tens of thousands nationwide and millions of youth around the globe who joined in the global youth strike against climate change. In...
THE UNITE trade union is demanding an urgent meeting with Ernst & Young, Interserve’s administrators, after Friday’s announcement that the company is being forced into administration. The entire workforce is facing an uncertain future. Workers will be expected to continue working normally unless specifically told otherwise. Unite expects to be fully...
YOUTH in their hundreds of thousands rose up all over the world yesterday in a global strike against climate change. In every continent, and in 90 countries, tens of thousands of school students walked out of class, took to the streets and demanded a future, something which capitalism cannot provide...
THE TRADE Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), which represents more than 55 million workers on the continent, expresses the following in respect of the new threats and imminent conflict in Venezuela: ‘We condemn the unilateral decision by a group of governments of the region, notoriously led by the USA,...
AMENDMENT H calling for a second referendum was resoundingly defeated in parliament last night by 249 votes, with just 85 MPs voting for and 334 voting against. The Amendment was put in the name of MP Sarah Wollaston, proposed by the so-called Independent Group of MPs who split from the...
HUNDREDS of thousands of school youth are walking out on strike today in more than 100 countries around the globe over climate change. School youth from schools across the UK will join the strike with mass demonstrations planned in towns and cities across the country. In London school pupils will descend...
IN A HISTORIC meeting, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has held talks with Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on the final day of his landmark visit to the neighbouring Arab state. Rouhani sat down with Ayatollah Sistani at his residence on...
RESPONDING to the chancellor Philip Hammond’s Spring Statement yesterday, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: ‘The chancellor’s Spring Statement offered nothing to put a spring in the step of families whose incomes have gone into reverse, or the car workers and manufacturing communities whose livelihoods are under threat. ‘This was...
YESTERDAY the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced that there was enough evidence to prosecute one soldier, soldier F, for the murder of two people, James Wray and William McKinney, when British paratroopers opened fire on a peaceful civil rights demonstration in Derry on 30th January 1972. Soldier F also faces...
THE Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has branded proposed further cuts to Surrey fire and rescue service as ‘incomprehensible’, just months after a government inspection voiced ‘serious concerns’ about the county’s fire and rescue service. Surrey Fire and Rescue Service has experienced brutal cuts, with 131 firefighter positions slashed between 2010...
THE SCHOOL Cuts Coalition, including many education unions, on the eve of the Tory Spring Budget demanded the government address the ‘national emergency’ faced by schools and colleges due to years of being starved of funds. The School Cuts Coalition stated: ‘Parents, governors, school leaders, teachers and school staff have...
‘THE Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) could not come up with an unbiased report on the alleged 2018 chemical attack in Douma, as acknowledging that it was faked would have made the US strikes against Syria illegitimate,’ the Russian envoy to the OPCW said on Monday. In...
TORY PRIME minister Theresa May suffered another humiliating defeat in parliament on Tuesday when the latest version of her ‘deal’ with the EU was thrown out by MPs by a majority of 149. May has lost control of Parliament and lost control of the Tory party. She was forced to...
‘THE SAFETY of firefighters and our communities is the Fire Brigade Union’s greatest concern,’ Gary Keary, FBU Brigade Secretary for Greater Manchester, said yesterday, ‘and we will oppose any attempt to reduce the minimum amount of firefighters riding an appliance from five to four.’ The full horror of the cuts...
TORY PM May’s ‘Hostile Environment’ is alive and kicking, with trade union Unison highlighting the case of a married couple who face being split up after having jumped through every single hoop the Home Office has put them through, and still their application against deportation continues to be rejected! The...
FRANCE is experiencing an ‘epidemic of serious eye injuries’ as police repeatedly fire golf-ball-sized rubber bullets at Yellow Vest protesters, the country’s top ophthalmologists have written in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, demanding he halts use of the projectiles. The French newspaper Journal du Dimanche published the letter...
AFTER the failure at the Guri hydroelectric power plant left much of Venezuela without power last Thursday night, Venezuelan authorities, after a huge effort, managed to restore power to ‘many parts’ of the country. However, the country’s grid took another big hit on Saturday when many of the restored systems...
NURSERY heads marched on Downing Street yesterday, furious at the desperate lack of funding which is now so bad that nurseries are threatened with closure putting children’s futures at risk. 251 heads lobbied MPs then delivered a letter to Chancellor Philip Hammond. The head teachers’ union NAHT said there are...
SYRIAN government forces have carried out a major mopping-up operation in the country’s southwestern province of Rif Dimashq, and have discovered a considerable amount of US and Israeli-made munitions left behind in the terrorists’ hideouts. A field commander told Syria’s official news agency SANA that Syrian soldiers launched the operation...
A NEW CONTRACT for GPs was signed by Dr Vautrey, the chair of the BMA’s GP committee (GPC), on 31st January 2019. Its full title is ‘Investment and Evolution, A five-year framework for GP contract reform to implement the NHS Long Term Plan.’ This is one of the burning issues being...
LAST Thursday the European Central Bank (ECB) abandoned its previously proclaimed policy of ending free money handouts to the banks through quantitative easing (QE) programmes and zero interest rates. These policies, introduced to prevent the complete collapse of the European banking system after the 2008 world financial crash, were supposed...
WITH a ComRes poll revealing yesterday that public support for a no-deal Brexit is rapidly rising, up 6% since January and now standing at 44%, former Tory Brexit Secretary David Davis laid into Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement which is to be voted on in the House of Commons again...
AFTER union workers at a locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, struck a 90-day deal with Wabtec Corporation late last Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders said the victory ‘should send a message to corporate CEOs across the country’. As long-time senator and already-confirmed 2020 US Presidential candidate, Sanders’ statement continued – in...
TENS of thousands of school students around the world are set to walk out of their schools again to join the world-wide ‘Youth Strike 4 Climate’ action day this Friday, 15th March. The first mass walkout, on Friday 15th February, saw an estimated 15,000 schoolchildren go on strike in Britain,...
THE Aylesbury Young Offender Institution in Buckinghamshire has been locking up hundreds of teenage prisoners in their cells in solitary confinement for over 23-hours a day for as long as three months at a stretch, it has emerged. The Tory Ministry of Justice placed the prison in ‘special measures’ last...
STRIKING Kenyan airport workers have declared that they will not return to work until their union leaders are released from jail. On Friday morning, the workers marched to the court where their detained leaders appeared. The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Kenya’s capital Nairobi is in a state of total...
VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro says the United States has declared an ‘electric energy war’ against his country amid a widespread blackout that has left the capital Caracas and several other states in almost complete darkness. The blackout affected 23 of the country’s 24 states on Thursday evening after an ‘attack’...
STRUGGLING families are losing out on hundreds of pounds a year as a result of changes to child benefit over the past decade, said Unison yesterday. According to the report, Child Benefit – Still Under Attack, changes made by the government since 2010 have hit hard-pressed families and their pockets. A...
‘THESE figures reflect the stark reality facing NHS trusts resulting from the combination of relentless increases in patient demand, 100,000 staff vacancies and the legacy of a decade of austerity.’ That was the first response of Nick Ville, the NHS Confederation’s Director of Policy, following NHS Improvement’s latest quarterly performance...
MORE than 7,000 heads have written a joint letter to 3.5 million families warning of the acute funding crisis in schools. The heads insist that they have been ‘snubbed’ by the Tory education minister Nick Gibb, who won’t even meet with them face-to-face, claiming he is too busy. Their letter...
THE witchhunt against the Labour Party and its leader Corbyn is being stepped up with the news that The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is considering launching a formal investigation into alleged anti-Semitism in the party. ‘The Labour Party may have unlawfully discriminated against Jewish people’, the UK state’s human...
CAMPAIGNERS have reacted with fury at news that criminal charges over the Grenfell Tower fire may not be considered until 2021. Scotland Yard will not hand a file to prosecutors until the end of a public inquiry into the disaster. Survivors’ group Grenfell United said families were disheartened and very angry...
MORE than 150,000 people in the United States died in 2017 due to suicide, alcohol and drugs, an all-time high, according to a new analysis of government data. Nationwide, the number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide rose 6 per cent between 2016 and 2017, according to an analysis...