Monthly Archives: August 2020
A MAN was shot dead in Portland, Oregon as a large demonstration of supporters of President Trump clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters. The city has become a focus for demonstrations against police brutality and racism since the police killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25th May triggered...
A LEAKED government report suggests a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ of 85,000 deaths across the UK this winter due to Covid-19. The document also says while more restrictions could be re-introduced, schools would likely remain open. But it says the report ‘is a scenario, not a prediction’ and the data are...
THE Israeli military has carried out airstrikes and artillery attacks on various sites across the besieged Gaza Strip over what it cited as a volley of rockets launched from the Palestinian enclave into occupied territories. The military said in a statement that underground infrastructure and military positions belonging to the...
WHILE President Trump is celebrating the Israel-UAE alliance against Iran and Palestine, and planning to extend it throughout the region, his NATO allies are getting ready to cut each other’s throats in the Med. Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu yesterday warned Greece that its plans to extend its territorial waters would...
UNITE and over 100 MPs have joined forces to plead with Chancellor Rishi Sunak to extend the job retention scheme (JRS) for the aviation sector until March 2021. The MPs have signed a letter, coordinated by Unite the union and published on Friday, which urges the chancellor to help stop...
PUBLIC sector union Unison says the UK immigration system has never been smooth to navigate. The Home Office is infamous for its extortionate fees and interminably long wait times. Under the disruption of Covid-19, the slowdown in operations (including a lack of appointments, delayed processing times and the suspension of...
US PRESIDENT Trump, in his desperate attempt to win the November presidential election, has stepped up his war against the working class, branding all those who oppose him as socialists and communists. He stated on the last day of the Republican Convention on Thursday evening: ‘This election will decide whether...
THERE are now 37,821 nurse vacancies in the NHS, NHS England confirmed yesterday, releasing the latest data. This is a rise of 1,738 from the last quarter when there were 36,083 vacancies. This proves, the Royal College of Nursing says, that nurses are getting driven out of the profession. The latest figures...
‘WHAT do we want? Pay rise! How will we get it? Strike!’ shouted over 200 nurses and NHS workers marching from St Thomas’ Hospital in central London to Downing Street on Wednesday afternoon. The protest was part of nationwide action outside hospitals and in city centres around the country, organised...
THIS week, the Tories’ criminal liability for the deaths of thousands of health care workers, the elderly and the disabled was revealed in two reports. The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) found that, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals had a blanket ‘no admissions’ policy for care home residents...
MEMBERS of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) in Kimberley picketed outside the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital on Monday, in preparation for the planned full-blown national strike on September 3. The Regional Secretary of Nehawu, Molemo Molemo, said pickets would continue in all sectors represented by the...
THE CRISIS engulfing British capitalism has drawn the organised working class, along with youth and entire sections of the middle class, into the struggle against mass unemployment and poverty. In the slump following the financial crash in 2008 low-paid ‘blue-collar’ workers were hit the hardest through unemployment as factories and...
THE Health and Safety Executive is being urged to investigate hospitals and care homes over the widespread Covid-19 infections among staff, which led to many deaths. More than 6,500 health and care workers may have been infected with coronavirus through their work, including 100 who died, according to the data...
‘TASERS can kill, and they are disproportionately used against people of colour,’ Rosalind Comyn of campaign group Liberty said yesterday. She was responding to Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel’s announcement that she has approved a new Taser for police to fire which is twice as powerful, has a better ‘hit...
OVER the past few days new police shootings of black men confirmed a warning from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that ‘significant racial disparities in police killings continue despite protests.’ Riots broke out in Wisconsin on Sunday evening after a black man, Jacob Blake, was repeatedly shot in the...
US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo is currently in the Middle East organising an Israeli-Arab coalition to fight Iran and prevent a Palestinian state. Pompeo has already said in Tel Aviv that he is working for other Arab states to follow the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and normalise relations with...
A STARTLING new report published by the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) states that during the peak of the pandemic people in care homes were given a blanket ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ DNR order, meaning that if they went into cardiac arrest or stopped breathing they would be left to die. The...
‘The current back-to-school plan does not provide the adequate level of safety required to protect students and their families from Covid-19,’ say union leaders representing Canada’s teachers and educational workers. The Nova Scotia Federation of Labour hosted a joint press conference on Wednesday 19th August, 2020 on behalf of all...
PROTESTS in the US state of Wisconsin erupted on Sunday evening following another shooting by police of a reportedly unarmed black man. According to reports, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by police and is currently in hospital where his condition is described as serious. Immediately following the...
A RALLY of over 200 PCS strikers from Tate Enterprises, employed at Tate Modern and Tate Britain galleries was held on Saturday outside the Turbine Hall entrance to fight 313 job losses. The strikers have voted for indefinite strike from today, Monday August 24th and are demanding: 10% of the...
A MAJOR Royal College of Nursing (RCN) survey has revealed how the pandemic has affected the professional lives of nursing staff. It shows, from the hours that they worked to the support they received – how staff in all settings experienced major changes. The ‘Building a Better Future for Nursing’...
UK GOVERNMENT debt has risen above £2 trillion and hit £2.004 trillion for July. The debt is £227.6bn more than last year. It is the first time the debt has been above 100% of gross domestic product (GDP) since 1960-61, the ONS has confirmed. The July borrowing figure was £26.7bn...
UK GOVERNMENT debt has risen above £2 trillion for the first time amid heavy spending to support the failing capitalist economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Spending on measures such as the furlough scheme means the debt figure now equals the value of everything the UK produces in a year.
Total debt...
OVER 1,000 British Airways (BA) baggage handlers, loaders and other ‘below-wing’ ground staff workers voted unanimously in favour of strike action at a mass meeting at Bedfont Football Ground on the outskirts of Heathrow Airport on Thursday afternoon. This is the first mass meeting called by the Unite union since...
AT A THOUSAND-strong mass meeting of British Airways workers at Bedfont Football Ground on the outskirts of Heathrow Airport on Thursday, workers voted unanimously for strike action. On August 5th, British Airways sacked 42,000 workers with the intention of rehiring 30,000 on inferior contracts in a ‘sign or be sacked’...
‘LEGAL and industrial action is inevitable,’ Unite said yesterday, the day a mass meeting took place at the grounds of Bedfont FC in Feltham, Twickenham after British Airways sacked 42,000 workers in a ‘sign or be sacked’ scheme where workers had to agree to work under inferior contracts or...
THE PALESTINIAN resistance is ready to repulse any Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, member of Hamas Political Bureau Khalil al-Hayya has said. Speaking at a popular demonstration held in Gaza by Palestinian factions to protest at the Emirati-Israeli deal, al-Hayya added that all Palestinian segments and factions are united...
ON SATURDAY the ban on evicting tenants in England and Wales, introduced by the Tories at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, is due to end, leaving an estimated 230,000 facing eviction for rent arrears. According to research by the housing charity Shelter, an estimated 227,000 adult private renters in...
THE SPECIAL Tribunal for Lebanon has not found evidence that the leadership of Hezbollah was involved in the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, judge David Re said on Tuesday when reading out the decision. ‘The trial chamber is of the view that Syria and Hezbollah may have had...
WHEN the most right-wing Tory supporting newspaper in the country turns on the Tory government, accusing it of gross incompetence and heading for disaster, it is a sure sign the Tories are at the point of destruction. Yesterday, an article in the Daily Telegraph by commentator Jeremy Warner tore into...
BRITISH Airways workers yesterday accused their union leaders of ‘aiding and abetting’ BA in its mass sackings and contract-busting plans, and demanded the Unite and GMB unions call national strike action now to defend their jobs, terms and conditions. Unite told its ‘below wing’ (i.e. ground staff, baggage handlers and...
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has slammed the recent ‘normalisation agreement’ between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, and has called on Emiratis to boycott any Israeli activity in their country. A BDS statement released on Monday said: ‘Palestinian civil society stands with the silenced majority in...
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is stepping up his trade war onslaught on China as his November presidential election date approaches, and the US continues to be wracked by a jobs, coronavirus, and homeless crisis, with workers mobilising to force a massive change. To bring back millions of jobs to the...
‘WE REALISE that we had taken the wrong road and that we needed to change course,’ Roger Taylor, chair of The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) which regulates qualifications, admitted yesterday, announcing the government has capitulated, forced to make a complete U-turn over A-level grades. As of now...
The lead story in last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper announced: ‘Hancock axes failing public health body,’ adding ‘PHE (Public Health England) to be scrapped this week and replaced by a privately-run German-style pandemic response agency.’ The plan is that the body known as ‘Public Health England’ is to be merged...
THE ELECTRONIC ‘consultation’ being carried out by the Unite and GMB unions with their members employed by BA is not just a travesty of trade unionism but a complete betrayal of every principle that workers have fought for in 200 years of struggle to build independent organisations to fight...
BOTH the Unite and GMB trade unions have given up the fight to halt the mass sackings organised by British Airways, centring on Heathrow Airport. Instead of organising a strike ballot and a mass picket for today to stop the airport and the mass sackings, the two unions have organised...
YESTERDAY, South Africa marked the anniversary of one of the darkest moments in its history – when police officials opened fire on striking Lonmin mineworkers, killing 34 of them. The Marikana community gathered to commemorate those massacred striking miners, so brutally gunned down on August 16th 2012.
This year the Socio-Economic...
THE announcement on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel have reached a peace deal did not emerge suddenly in the past months but had been prepared for at least five years. What is also becoming clear is that this deal brokered by US imperialism was not simply...
‘UNITE must call national strike action now to stop the jobs bloodbath at Heathrow Airport,’ British Airways ground staff worker Jamil Singh told News Line yesterday. Already this week, British Airways (BA) has sacked hundreds of ground staff ‘on the spot’ when they came into work, escorting them to their...
‘THESE latest sets of NHS performance statistics are deeply concerning, and paint a very bleak picture for the future delivery of patient care if urgent intervention is not forthcoming. ‘This is despite doctors and NHS staff working tirelessly around the clock to deliver care in increasingly challenging circumstances.’
In commenting above...
US PRESIDENT Trump announced on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel will ‘normalise’ relations. UAE is the first Arab nation to do so in 25 years. Only three other countries out of the 22 member states of the Arab League recognise the state of Israel: Egypt...
AS A-LEVEL results came in yesterday morning head teachers warned that lowered grades are ‘unfair and unfathomable’ while teachers said that the results were based on algorithm rather than the student’s performance. In England, 36% of entries had a lower grade than teachers predicted and 3% were down two grades,...
ISRAEL and the United Arab Emirates reached a deal yesterday that will lead to a full normalisation of diplomatic relations between the two, in an agreement that United States President Donald Trump brokered, with his Presidential election in mind. This is the first time in 25 years that an Arab...