Monthly Archives: April 2020
FIREFIGHTERS are to fit face masks and deliver vital PPE and medical supplies to NHS and care staff. Fire and Rescue personnel have volunteered to fit face masks for frontline NHS and clinical care staff and deliver medical supplies to hospitals and care facilities during the coronavirus outbreak.
This was after...
‘HEALTHCARE workers are our soldiers on the front line, and they are literally being sent into war without any weapons,’ insisted Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim. He went on to warn: ‘It is shocking and unacceptable that to date the concerns raised by workers have not been adequately addressed.
‘This is...
INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund’s (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva said yesterday: ‘We anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.’ ‘Just three months ago, we expected positive per capita income growth in over 160 of our member countries in 2020,’ she said. ‘Today, that number has been turned on its...
NURSES at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, north west London, were forced to wear bin bags because of a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and as a direct result all three have tested POSITIVE for coronavirus! The three nurses used clinical waste bags on their heads and feet last...
LAST WEDNESDAY, the US ‘democratic socialist’ Senator Bernie Sanders announced to his supporters that he was quitting the race to become the Democratic candidate to face Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. In a video, Sanders concluded that he had no viable path to the nomination saying: ‘We are now...
THE Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), also known as Bank Markazi, says the country has won a legal battle in Europe to dismiss a US attempt to have Iranian funds blocked and handed over to Washington for compensating the so-called victims of terror. Abdolnasser Hemmati said on...
THE UNITE union has agreed a package with engineering giant Rolls-Royce to financially protect the 20,000 UK workforce during the coronavirus emergency by delaying a wage rise for a year. Rolls-Royce has major plants in Derby, Bristol, Glasgow and Barnoldswick, Lancashire. Unite regional officer Tony Tinley, responsible for the union’s members...
Despite repeated assurances by the government for over a week that millions of units of protective equipment have been delivered to the front line, a BMA survey with 2,000 responses, revealed large numbers of doctors still expected to care for Covid-19 patients with little or no PPE (personal protective...
‘THOSE of us in the economic realm must navigate blindly through the fog. We face a plausible spectrum ranging from V-shaped relief to L-shaped awfulness at the other extreme. Perhaps it is superstition but Boris’ fate somehow seems symbolic.’ This is the deadly conclusion as far as capitalism is concerned...
DOCTORS, nurses, trades unionists, workers and youth took part in protests at the entrances of many hospitals throughout Greece yesterday morning against the government’s inability to provide mass tests, protective clothing and masks and appoint the necessary doctors and nurses to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The action was called by...
‘IT IS accurate to say that the US is weaponising the coronavirus against these countries (Iran and Venezuela),’ film director Oliver Stone has said. ‘As a number of religious scholars have warned: “Plagues expose the foundations of injustice” in our societies,’ Stone wrote in an opinion piece on Saturday, exposing...
PRIME Minister Boris Johnson is now in intensive care at St Thomas’ hospital, laid low by the coronovirus, perfectly reflecting the state of British capitalism which is in its greatest crisis ever – despite much intensive care! Inevitably, a struggle for the leadership of the Tory Party and government is...
DEMOCRATIC lawmakers have formally protested against the Navy’s dismissal of the commander of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, who requested urgent aid to stop a coronavirus outbreak on board his ship. Lawmakers from both chambers of Congress formally requested on Friday that the Pentagon’s independent Inspector General immediately investigates...
THE TORY Party has launched a massive campaign to blame China to cover up their own culpability in the rapid spread of the coronavirus, which, by yesterday, has resulted in more than 48,000 people contracting the disease and 4,943 deaths in the UK. A report from the Tory-controlled Commons Foreign...
WORKERS in Zimbabwe have expressed dismay at the lack of seriousness on the government’s part, after it exempted more companies to operate during the 21-day lockdown intended to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus (Covid-19). The government imposed the lockdown from March 30th to April 19th, but the largest...
THE election of Starmer as Labour leader has been cheered to the rooftops by both the trade union bureaucracy and the Tory Party-supporting media. His claim to infamy is that his refusal to oppose a second referendum over the EU and to fight the last election supporting the Brexit referendum...
NURSES are forced to ‘hold their breath’ because of inadequate face masks during dangerous operations, while doctors have absolutely no eye protection, it was revealed yesterday. These were some of the shocking revelations from Dr Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors’ Association, when he appeared on Sky News Sophy Ridge...
THE Greek National Health Service doctors’ union OENGE has called on all doctors, trades unions, trades councils and social association to ‘organise jointly mobilisations at hospitals’ entrances and protests at health administrative centres’ on 7 April, the ‘World Health Day – National Day of Action’. The call was issued last...
GREECE has quarantined a refugee camp in the country’s mainland – home to 2,300 people – for at least two weeks after 20 of its residents tested positive for Covid-19. Doctors Without Borders (or MSF), along with other NGOs, is calling for the camps to be urgently evacuated to avoid...
THE COLLAPSE of the US economy with 10 million US workers losing their jobs in the last two weeks, allied to the already collapsed state of the UK economy, with the Bank of England considering printing hundreds of billions of new notes masquerading as money to try and rescue...
VENTILATORS are to be rationed, using tactics employed on the battlefield, where army medics choose who to treat and who to leave to bleed out depending on patients’ survival odds, doctors warn. New guidance from the British Medical Association (BMA) which will mean doctors deciding who will live and who...
WILDCAT strikes by postal workers at three Scottish sorting offices over serious health and safety issues has forced Royal Mail to change its policy on delivering junk mail during the coronavirus crisis. Further walkouts are on the cards as issues surrounding protective equipment have not been resolved. Royal Mail has now...
TWO SOUTH African Free State nurses were shot with rubber bullets by police last Tuesday in Welkom, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers (NEWAHU) trade union is claiming. The police, however, denied receiving such reports and alleged they know nothing about it.
Police shot the two nurses from the Bongani...
THE NUMBER of people forced to claim Universal Credit soared by nearly a million in the past two weeks. According to the Department for Work and Pensions 950,000 successful applications for payment were made between the 16th March, the day when the government advised people to work from home, and...
A FIFTH of all small and medium-sized businesses in the UK are unlikely to get the cash they need to survive the next four weeks. A network of accountants suggests between 800,000 and a million firms nationwide may soon have to close after the banks have refused them emergency loans.
The...
OVER 100 Amazon employees at a New York fulfilment centre went on strike at noon on Monday, alleging management has been unresponsive to safety concerns and the spread of the coronavirus at the facility. The man who organised the strike has been sacked.
Chris Smalls, a management assistant at the site...
A FIFTH of all UK small and medium sized businesses are set to close permanently over the next four weeks as they run out of cash, according to research published yesterday. Between 800,000 and a million will collapse as the banks refuse to give them the emergency loans which they...
JAM-PACKED ASOS clothing warehouse is a ‘cradle of disease’, terrified workers in the GMB union warned yesterday, calling for their entire operation to be immediately shut down. Up to 4,000 people work at the ASOS warehouse in Grimethorpe, Barnsley – and 98% of them feel unsafe at work amid the coronavirus crisis, according to...
Mayor Sadiq Khan told the BBC evening news on March 30th that despite the new ‘NHS Nightingale hospital’ potentially providing space for 4,000 beds, double the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds would actually be needed in London. The new temporary NHS Nightingale Hospital situated at the Excel conference...
ON JUNE 14th 2017, almost three years ago, fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block in North Kensington. It caused the deaths of 72 men, women and children. The survivors of this disaster have in vain demanded justice, and have experienced official government opposition to their demands that...