Monthly Archives: May 2020
‘THE FURLOUGH scheme can not continue indefinitely,’ Tory Chancellor Sunak said yesterday at the Downing Street daily briefing, announcing that by September, the employer will pay 10% towards it, going up to 20% in November and that the scheme will shut altogether in December. He also announced that far from...
SYRIANS in the villages of al-Qahira and al-Dushaisha – in Tal Tamir in Hasaka northern countryside – have intercepted US occupation force vehicles and driven them back to another of their illegitimate bases in the region. (Syrian Arab News Agency) SANA’s reporter in Hasaka said that a number of US-...
‘THEY EXECUTED my brother in broad daylight. People had to film that. People had to see that,’ Philonise Floyd the brother of George Floyd, killed by US cops, said, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘People pleaded for his life.’ In reaction to the police killing, Minneapolis has erupted with three days...
TORY PM Johnson during the daily Downing Street press briefing yesterday, repeatedly blocked journalists from asking his scientific and medical advisors about the ongoing scandal surrounding chief advisor Dominic Cummings, whom Johnson refuses to sack. Cummings travelled 260 miles to see his parents, breaking the lockdown rules, leading to an...
MASS uprisings have broken out in Minneapolis as hectic protests over the police killing of an unarmed black man George Floyd escalated into violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. The city descended into riots for the last three days following the police killing of George Floyd. While the officers...
THE INSTITUTE of Directors (IoD) has warned that 250,000 businesses could sack workers as the Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak runs down the furlough scheme. Sunak this week will unveil his plan to end the scheme under which the government pays 80% of the wages of furloughed workers, and according to...
BLACK, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) nursing staff are still more likely to have problems accessing protective equipment, according to latest UK-wide member survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). The survey finds that for nursing staff working in high-risk environments (this includes those working in intensive and critical...
A BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL STUDY reveals that almost three quarters of leaders of influential medical groups have financial ties to industry. Payments to them totalled almost $130m, with an average $31,000 per leader.
Some organisations will require major reform to restore public trust, say experts.
The results show that up to 80%...
AN ARTICLE in the Business section of the Daily Telegraph yesterday laid bare the historic depth of the crisis of world capitalism today. The article, ‘Why the world needs a new Bretton Woods moment’, states bluntly: ‘The global economy faces its greatest upheaval since the Second World War as coronavirus...
CITIZENS Advice (CA) has confirmed that in the two months since the lockdown began it has helped over 10,000 people with issues related to the private rental sector – and 1,000 of those related to evictions. This is despite the Tories having introduced emergency legislation to suspend new evictions from...
THE UK government is considering intervening in large UK companies through ‘Project Birch’ to ‘save’ the firms that are going bust by more government intervention. The Treasury has said that this ‘last resort’ support is to be made available if a firm’s failure would ‘disproportionately harm the UK economy –...
VENEZUELA’S permanent representative to the UN has welcomed the arrival of Iranian tankers loaded with gasoline to the South American country’s waters, urging US President Donald Trump to avoid any act of aggression based on the ‘wrong advice’ of warmongers. In a series of tweets on Sunday, Samuel Moncada cited...
IN A COMPLETELY unprecedented act of defiance Boris Johnson’s special advisor Dominic Cummings gave a press conference yesterday defending his conduct in breaking the lockdown rules and dismissing calls for him to resign. In showing contempt for both the rules over lockdown and the parliamentary Code of Conduct for Special...
‘I KNOW that the British people hate the idea of unfairness. People like me who make the rules should be accountable for their actions,’ Dominic Cummings, special advisor to PM Boris Johnson said at a press conference in the garden of 10 Downing Street yesterday afternoon. However he refused to...
‘THE PRIME Minister and government ministers are asking people to clap for frontline workers on Thursdays – while their policies continue gutting frontline services,’ FBU (Fire Brigades Union) general secretary Matt Wrack is warning union members and the public. ‘It’s shameless hypocrisy,’ he stressed. ‘While firefighters are taking on sweeping...
ON SUNDAY, the Iranian embassy in Caracas posted a video of the first Iranian oil tanker arriving in Venezuelan waters. ‘The first Iranian tanker reached the Venezuelan coasts. Grateful to the Bolivarian Armed Forces for escorting them,’ it tweeted. The first of five Iranian tankers carrying 1.53 million barrels of...
LECTURERS are furious after Blackburn College announced plans to sack staff but boost bosses’ pensions. 29 jobs are at risk in the fifth round of job cuts in four years. Blackburn College has announced controversial plans to axe 11 posts, whilst giving senior managers a salary boost to help them avoid...
BRITAIN was involved in smuggling arm shipments to the terrorists in Syria from the beginning of 2012, training and organising them under the name of ‘moderate opposition’, in an operation that lasted many years in cooperation with the US and Saudi Arabia, alleges British journalist and writer, Mark Curtis. New...
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has stepped up his war against China. Trump said on Thursday the United States ‘would react strongly if China imposes new national security legislation on Hong Kong’. His remarks were made hours after a Chinese official said the National People’s Congress is exercising its constitutional power...
‘THE conformity of concepts with objects is not subjective,’ Lenin stressed in a comment on cognition in his Philosophical Notebooks, close to the end of his critical re-reading and materialist re-rendering, three years before Russia’s 1917 Revolution, of Hegel’s idealist two-volume work The Science of Logic. The key sentence shows,...
THE PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has issued orders to his cabinet members to immediately start work on implementing the decision of the Palestinian leadership regarding ending all agreements and understandings with Israel, as the only answer possible to the Trump-inspired Israeli plan to annex the occupied territories and liquidate...
ISRAEL’S policy regarding Palestinian neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem is driven by its goal to take over as much land as possible and expand its control as far as it can while doing what it can to degrade their residents, according to a new report by the Israeli human...
TORY chancellor Rishi Sunak dropped any pretence that British capitalism would stage a miraculous ‘bounce back’ when he confessed that the country faces ‘a severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen before.’ Sunak, speaking after the latest figures showing that unemployment has surged and is now six times...
THE TORY government has launched a three-pronged attack on parents, teachers and councils in a bid to force schools to open – despite all three warning that it is unsafe to do so. Tory Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has refused to rule out taking councils to court over their refusal...
‘OUR INPUT on reopening schools during lockdown is being ignored’ say South African unions. Two of the country’s biggest unions have indicated that they will not support any decision by the council of ministers to discuss the reopening of schools.
The council’s meeting on Monday, hosted by Basic Education Minister Angie...
THE NUMBER of people claiming unemployment benefit in the UK soared to 2.1 million in April – the first full month of the coronavirus lockdown. The April total went up by 856,500, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. According to the Resolution Foundation, because of the coronavirus pandemic, more...
THE 15th of May 1948 was an extraordinary day for the Palestinian people, it was the day when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homeland, with all their belongings and became refugees, as Zionist militias attacked the country to make way for Jewish migrants to replace the indigenous...
A STUDY published yesterday revealed that as many as six million workers in Britain live in fear of losing their jobs in the next six months as the country crashes into the greatest economic recession in 300 years. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that the survey showed ‘Life has...
THE HEADLINE of The Sunday Telegraph’s editorial yesterday is very much to the point. It insists: ‘The teaching unions must be defeated,’ and continues, ‘It ought to be no surprise that they are resisting the government’s plans to reopen schools gradually and safely.’ The brazen Telegraph continues: ‘Restaurants are experimenting...
As London Underground ramps up services today, ASLEF has advised members of their right to refuse to work in circumstances where they are at risk of serious and imminent danger. Finn Brennan, ASLEF organiser on the Underground, said: ‘Despite our objections, London Underground has insisted that train drivers revert to...
NURSING staff in the UK are still under pressure to work without PPE and lack promised gowns. Over a third of nursing staff (34%) in the UK say they are still under pressure to care for patients with possible or confirmed Covid-19 without adequate protective equipment.
The findings are revealed in...
THE SOUTH African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), on this day when the world celebrates the International Day of the Nurse and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, join millions of world citizens in saluting nurses in our country, South Africa, and the world over. There could...
Last Sunday Boris Johnson announced that the Tories intend to reopen primary and reception schools year 1 and year 6 on June 1st, with secondary schools years 10 and 12 opening up before the summer. Johnson’s announcement was immediately denounced by the National Education Union (NEU) which immediately emailed its...
A&E VISITS in England have halved since the coronavirus outbreak started, dropping to their lowest level since records began. Before the pandemic, more than 2.1m patients a month were visiting A&E. In April that dropped to 916,581.
Everything from cancer care to routine surgery has been hit hard by coronavirus, and...
JERUSALEM – On the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the Palestinian dispersal and expulsion from their homes and land in Palestine on May 15, 1948, in what is now known as the Nakba or catastrophe, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said that the Palestinian population has...
THE DAY after official figures were released showing that the UK economy was crashing into the deepest depression for 300 years, the governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey rushed to reassure the country that the Bank would throw a lifeline to the sinking ship and that austerity...
TORY CHANCELLOR SUNAK yesterday said it is ‘very likely’ the UK is in a ‘significant recession’, as figures show the economy contracting at the fastest pace since the financial crisis. The economy shrank by 2% in the first three months of 2020, as coronavirus forced the country into lockdown. Sunak said...
BRITISH capitalism is officially in recession as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported yesterday. In just three months, the UK economy shrank at a rate even faster than that it achieved at the peak of the 2008 world banking crash. The UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 2% in...
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell held a closed, online annual general meeting yesterday because of the coronavirus crisis. IndustriALL submitted questions to the company on its treatment of contract workers in resource-rich developing countries. On 13 May, Shell held an online shareholder’s engagement meeting ahead of the 19 May AGM. Shareholders...