Monthly Archives: February 2020
ATTORNEY General Suella Braverman’s undertaking that evidence given by contractors at the Grenfell Inquiry will not be used to prosecute them constitutes ‘One rule for them and another for us,’ firefighters union the FBU insisted yesterday. The Attorney General has written to the Chair of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry notifying...
A PALESTINIAN journalist shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers as he documented a demonstration in the West Bank in 2015 will not be paid damages, a Jerusalem court has ruled – despite the shooting’s violation of army regulations. The Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court this week rejected the lawsuit against the...
CORONAVIRUS is spreading around the world, sparking a global economic collapse. For seven days in a row financial markets have fallen. The crisis has hit the UK and the US markets hard, making for the worst financial crisis since the banking crash of 2007/8. The IMF last week warned that...
A LONDON march and rally marking the fifth day of strike action in over 30 Sixth Form Colleges took place yesterday, with union leaders on top of a campaigning battle bus, highlighting the savage cuts to colleges and demanding ‘urgent funds now!’ The Sixth Form Staff are in the National...
SAEB EREKAT, secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), on Wednesday urged the European Union to intervene to prevent Israel from building a settlement in E1 area, east of occupied Jerusalem, as announced on Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Erekat handed the European...
WITNESSES from the firms responsible for creating a death trap at Grenfell Tower are to be granted immunity from prosecution arising out of any evidence they give to the inquiry into the tragedy that killed 72 people. The immunity from ‘self incrimination’ extends not just to the companies involved in...
THE Attorney General ruled yesterday that contractors can give evidence to the Grenfell inquiry without fear of prosecution over the 72 deaths. Grenfell United, the survivors and bereaved families group, said: ‘It’s a sad day when bereaved and survivors are asked to weigh up the need for truth and need...
OVER 300 striking lecturers, university staff and students rallied outside the Universities UK (UUK) HQ in Tavistock Square, central London yesterday shouting: ‘Hey, hey, UUK, our pensions are here to stay!’ Staff had come from universities around London to join the rally and march marking the end of their second...
A FURTHER two days of strike action will take place on South Western Railway next week after RMT Guard members voted for industrial action for an historic sixth time. The strike is over the company’s unremitting failure to give assurances that its new operational model won’t move to Driver Controlled...
THE SICKEST NHS patients ‘face hours on trolleys’ and in hospital corridors as the NHS desperately tries to find them beds, according to research carried out by the BBC. Helen Buckingham, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said it was clear there was ‘very little fuel in the tank’ when...
IMPERIAL College staff were boosted on their picket line yesterday morning by the support of an engineering student and a vintage bus. The nationwide strike of staff at 74 universities completes its second week and fifth day of strike action today. Pickets were out around the Imperial College campus in west...
TENANTS came from all over the country to lobby Parliament yesterday demanding that the tower blocks they live in are immediately stripped of flammable cladding before another terrible fire, like the one at Grenfell Tower, breaks out. Over fifty residents and campaigners fighting for safe homes protested in Parliament Square...
STRIKING University and College Union (UCU) lecturers and their supporters are marching through London today, assembling at 12 noon outside Universities UK HQ in Tavistock Square, and proceeding to the Universities Superanuation Scheme (USS) office in Threadneedle Street, City of London. The biggest ever wave of strike action on university...
GLOBAL financial markets fell like crazy on Monday after a rise in coronavirus cases renewed fears and panic that the entire system is heading for its biggest ever crash. In the US, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 posted their sharpest daily declines since 2018, with the Dow falling 3.5%...
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange’s trial at Woolwich Crown Court began yesterday morning, where the Tory government is seeking to extradite him to the US to face 18 charges for ‘encouraging, receiving and publishing classified documents linked to national defence’. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 175...
SYRIA says the US is ‘dismayed’ to see the return of normal life to Aleppo province because of the ‘humiliating defeats’ of the Washington-sponsored terrorists there by pro-Damascus forces. In a statement carried by the official SANA news agency on Saturday, a source at the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the...
Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued a stark warning on Sunday that the world’s ‘fragile’ economic recovery could be completely derailed by the coronavirus epidemic as it spreads across the globe and becomes pandemic. Already over 1,200 cases have been confirmed in 26 countries other...
THE TORY government is drawing up plans for new anti-union laws to ‘break the stranglehold of the trade unions’, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper disclosed yesterday, revealing that the teaching unions are to be a particular target. It said that Downing Street is examining proposals to ‘bolster the rights of non-union...
Over 2,000 marched from Australia House to a rally in Parliament Square in support of Julian Assange on Saturday shouting: ‘Free Julian Assange! Only one solution, no extradition!’ Among those assembling were supporters from the USA, Germany, Switzerland and a group of Yellow Vests from France. News Line spoke to some...
A SEVEN-DAY ‘reduction in violence’ between the US and the Afghan Taliban began on February 21, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying, as he signed up for the deal: ‘This is an important step on a long road to peace.’ Taliban negotiators have assured the USA that a...
ALMOST a decade after his WikiLeaks website enraged Washington by leaking secret US documents, a London court will begin hearings on Monday to decide whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States. The 48-year-old is wanted by the United States on 18 criminal counts of conspiring to hack...
UNIVERSITY staff completed their first two days of strike action yesterday at 74 universities across the country and their strike was solid, winning 100% support from the students union the NUS, which fully endorsed the strike. They are back out on strike Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, four...
THE HOME Office is ‘institutionally racist’. This is the verdict of the first draft of the ‘lessons learned’ review by Wendy Williams, HM Inspector of Constabulary into the Windrush scandal. This was revealed in a leak that came to light yesterday. The accusation that the Home Office is ‘institutionally racist’...
THE NATIONAL Union of Students (NUS) threw its weight behind the biggest ever wave of strikes on university campuses yesterday. The NUS pledged its solid support for the staff at 74 universities across the length and breadth of the country who launched their 14 days of strike yesterday. They are...
THE City of Moncton management hides a dirty secret. It has been exploiting employment contract language loopholes to penny- pinch workers. Over 20% of all municipal outside workers are without ordinary benefits, job protection, and wages all other City employees have.
The union representing municipal outside workers – CUPE – is...
BILLIONAIRE Michael Bloomberg, whose wealth amounts to $64bn, has seen his bid to purchase first of all the Democratic nomination to be its presidential candidate, and then to be the President of the USA falter badly on Wednesday night at the Nevada Forum. Bloomberg had refused to take part in...
THE BLAME for the disruption to students’ education by strike action starting today lays squarely at the door of vice-chancellors, said the University and College Union (UCU). UCU members at 74 UK universities will walk out for 14 days in the largest wave of strikes ever seen on UK campuses. Universities...
‘End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange,’ demand Doctors for Assange – Stephen Frost, Lissa Johnson, Jill Stein and William Frost on behalf of 117 signatories in the following open letter published in The Lancet medical journal on 17th February. ‘On Nov 22, 2019, we, a group of more...
The Army and Armed Forces General Command announced that tens of villages and towns in Aleppo western and northwestern countryside have been liberated. The liberation comes after a series of concentrated military operations against positions and fortifications of the terrorist organisations which are on the list of terrorism according to...
THE DEEPENING of the world crisis of capitalism is driving forward massive job cuts for workers across the world, as manufacturing industry globally faces the biggest crash in its history. The latest manifestation of this was the announcement yesterday by the UK’s largest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), that...
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange, who has been held in terrible conditions in Belmarsh Prison, is ‘in a dire state of health due to psychological torture’, health professionals warned yesterday in an open letter. Assange has been held in solitary confinement in the high security HMP Belmarsh since April 2019, awaiting...
‘ENOUGH is enough, it’s time to follow the successful policies of other countries and ban these contracts once and for all,’ GMB’s Tim Roache said yesterday responding to new figures showing a massive rise in zero hours contracts, pushing almost a million people onto them. New Office for National Statistics...
THE SYRIAN government has reopened Aleppo airport for civilian flights in a great victory over the US-UK axis which, supported by Turkey, has sought to keep Aleppo and Idlib provinces under the rule of pro-ISIS militias. Transport Minister Ali Hammoud announced on Monday that Aleppo International Airport has resumed operations. The...
FRENCH unions brought the transport system to a halt again yesterday on ‘Black Monday’ the day the French parliament, the Assemblée nationale, began debating President Macron’s attack on workers’ pensions. Tens of thousands spilled onto the streets of Paris. Trade unions marched with their banners, carrying red flares chanted slogans...
THE UNIVERSITY of California’s largest employee union, AFSCME Local 3299, has voted to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders’ bid for President ahead of California’s March 3rd Primary Election. AFSCME Local 3299 represents 26,000 Service and Patient Care workers at the University of California, and is comprised mostly of women and black...
TORY austerity cuts have meant that poorer areas of the country have been left completely at the mercy of floods, to the extent that villages in Yorkshire have been forced to buy their own flood defences to protect their homes. As storm Dennis raged across the country over the weekend,...
THE COMMUNICATION Workers Union is calling for a massive vote for strike action against Royal Mail management’s attempts ‘to virtually de-recognise the CWU and impose what they want without any safeguards for members’. An Urgent Update to All London members dated February 2020 says that ballot papers will be dispatched...
MORE than 100,000 A&E patients waited for hours to be treated in hospitals in January, the highest number since records began, NHS figures show. There were 100,578 patients delayed more than four hours, of whom 2,846 waited more than 12 hours from decision to admit to admission, according to performance...
THE ISRAELI DAILY newspaper Hayom has reported that the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is to lead the joint committee that the US government has appointed to map out the areas in the occupied West Bank that Israel will annex to implement US President Donald Trump’s ‘Deal of...
DIGGER manufacturer JCB is cutting production and working hours in the UK as it faces a shortage of components from China due to the coronavirus outbreak. There will be reduced working hours for the 4,000 staff from Monday and an immediate suspension of overtime. More than 25% of JCB’s suppliers...
A THOUSAND school youth walked out of classes yesterday to join the mass protest in Parliament Square, furious at how capitalism is destroying the environment, as part of a global youth strike with young people coming out in countries around the world. Around the UK, school students came out, with...
MEMBERS of National Nurses United (NNU), the US’s largest union of registered nurses, on Tuesday celebrated Senator Bernie Sanders’ New Hampshire primary win, saying it shows voters want a president who fights for the people. ‘The people of New Hampshire have spoken, and nurses are so moved to know that...
AN INQUIRY into baby deaths at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust has been broadened into an investigation of hundreds of deaths nationally, Tory junior health minister Nadine Dorries has announced. Since 2010, Tory cuts have shut maternity services down at hospital after hospital around the length and breadth of...
POSTAL workers are preparing for a second ballot for national strike action between 3rd and 17th March over management moves to steamroller through plans to smash up the mail service and destroy thousands of jobs. In October last year postal members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted by 97.1%...