Monthly Archives: February 2021
‘The Department for Health and Social Care’s decision to prioritise hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic meant social care providers were left exposed by lack of PPE (personal protective equipment).’ This devastating conclusion of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC’s) first report on PPE procurement, which was...
UNITE yesterday launched a ‘learning hub, to improve employability’ for its members at Heathrow airport. Announcing the launching of this ‘learning hub@heathrow’, Unite stated that it was intended to ‘assist its members employed at Heathrow and in the local community to develop their skills in order to improve their prospects...
BY RETIRED BMA MEMBER ANNA ATHOW THE main story on BBC news on Saturday, was that Boris Johnson was proposing to reverse the Cameron health reforms.
We were told all day: ‘There has been a leaked document.
‘Boris Johnson is planning to reverse the health reforms and reduce the role of the...
JERUSALEM – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement has welcomed the letter by 81 British parliamentarians to the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, calling on the British government to do everything in its power to stop the mass, forced evictions and dispossession by the Israeli authorities of Palestinian families...
ANYONE who has visited one of the red list countries and who fails to quarantine in a government-designated hotel faces a fine of up to £10,000, Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced yesterday, adding that anyone who lies on their passenger locator form faces 10 years in jail. All those...
AS THEY launched a general strike last Thursday the giant CGT French trades union federation demanded the government of Emmanuel Macron extend a ban on eviction of rental tenants to beyond June 1st. The Minister in charge of Housing, Emmanuelle Wargon, announced the postponement to June 1st of the end...
OVER 80 British parliamentarians representing all parties, in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, on February 8th wrote in a letter to Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, that the British government must do everything in its power to prevent the mass forcible evictions and dispossession of...
TORY PM Johnson must wait until there are fewer than 1,000 Covid infections a day before lifting lockdown, NHS bosses and scientists have warned. The latest figures showed another 828 people in the UK have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, and there were a further 18,262...
THE speaker of the Iranian Parliament is on his first official foreign visit to Moscow with the goal of further cementing the two countries’ strategic relations. Speaking to reporters before departure on Sunday, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said that Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has always emphasised...
WORKERS across Myanmar (formally Burma) came out on a nationwide general strike yesterday demanding the overthrow of the military dictatorship which was imposed last week. This intervention by the working class follows a massive surge of anger over the weekend as thousands turned out onto the streets of cities and...
Statement by Kamran Abbasi Executive editor British Medical Journal ‘WHAT went wrong in the global governance of Covid-19? After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic,’ writes Kamran Abbasi, executive editor British Medical Journal (BMJ).
His article continues: Murder is an emotive word. In law, it requires...
THE International Criminal Court ruled on Friday that it has jurisdiction over war crimes and atrocities committed in the Palestinian territories and can thus prosecute Israeli soldiers settlers and politicians who have killed and injured large numbers of Palestinians. The judgement paves the way for the court to open a...
TORY PM Johnson must wait until there are fewer than 1,000 Covid infections a day before lifting lockdown, NHS bosses and scientists have warned. The latest figures showed another 828 people in the UK have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, and there were a further 18,262...
NTHABELENG, a 28-year-old nurse on the front line of South Africa’s Covid-19 pandemic, is exhausted and afraid. Each day, she begins her shift haunted by the dread of contracting the coronavirus and dying, leaving behind a five-year-old daughter. She finishes it numb with fatigue, but the fear remains. Every week, ‘a...
THE STRONGEST and most viable effort yet to create a union at technology giant Amazon in many years is underway at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, USA. Organisers with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW (RWDSU-UFCW) have been campaigning at the Amazon fulfilment centre. By December 2020, more than...
THROWING TRUMP’S ‘America First’ economic policy out the window, the new US administration under President Biden is reinstating the interventionist policies which dominated during the Obama administration. Obama organised three wars simultaneously, on Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. Biden has set his sights on tackling both China and Russia. Trump sought...
SCUNTHORPE scaffolders have stepped up strike action at a British Steel site. The British Steel plant in Scunthorpe faces further disruption this month as scaffolders based at the site announced a further six days of strike action in a dispute over pay. The workers have already taken four days of strike...
BANKRUPT Italian capitalism moved on Tuesday night to cement the dictatorship of the bankers over the country when the president Sergio Mattarela unilaterally appointed Mario Draghi, the ex-head of the European Central Bank (ECB), as the country’s new Prime Minister. This dramatic appointment follows the chaos in Italian politics following...
LOW PAID cleaners, employed by multi-million pound outsourcing company Mitie at Heathrow Airport, have been left fearing for their jobs after the company reneged on a previous agreement regarding training. The workers, who are members of Unite, the UK’s principal aviation union, are paid below the living wage. The majority of...
‘Kitson and Counter-Revolution’ was first featured by News Line on 30th April 2015.
We are producing it once again because the British state is now preparing to use Kitson methods against the working class in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere. THIS week it emerged that retired British general Sir Frank Kitson is...
YESTERDAY, the TUC joined forces with the leaders of top business groups to beg Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak to extend the furlough scheme for workers laid off due to coronavirus, warning that if he didn’t Britain will be plunged into mass unemployment. The TUC is urging Sunak to announce a...
TRANSPORT union RMT has blasted Transport for London (TfL) for calling on staff in South African variant postcodes to ‘come into work as normal’ thus exposing them to the virulent new strain of the coronavirus and undoubtedly putting their lives at risk. RMT wrote yesterday to TfL Commissioner Andy Byford...
HEALTH attacks by Israelis against Palestinians persist in the occupied territories during Covid-19 pandemic, says the World Health Organisation. In 2020 alone, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 59 Israeli attacks against Palestinian health care in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Of these, 42% (25) involved obstruction to the delivery of health...
ISRAELI forces have shot and killed three young Palestinians during overnight raids on several areas of the occupied West Bank. Two of the victims lost their lives when they were shot by Israeli police in the al-Fawqah neighbourhood of Tamra city, in the northern district of the occupied territories, late...
By Fra Hughes in West Belfast FOR the first time in 49 years, the Bloody Sunday Commemorative March has been forced off the road, as the Covid 19 worldwide Pandemic makes the march a victim of the social distancing regulations now in force to combat the virus.
Here Betty McBrearty Doherty,...
N THE early hours of Monday the military in Myanmar (formerly called Burma) seized power in a coup that saw the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrested and detained along with other leaders of her ruling National League for Democracy Party (NLD). All last week, the military were preparing...
‘DEFEAT this Tory onslaught by calling national strike action,’ Chigwell Aslef Chairman Bill Rogers said yesterday in response to the Tory government’s threat to impose a two-year pay freeze on railway workers. Rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris has written to the rail bosses saying that there is ‘no budget’ for the...
THE maritime law tribunal of the United Nations has ruled that Britain has no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. It criticised London for its failure to hand the territory back to Mauritius. The judges’ decision confirms a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a vote in the UN...
THAT the Covid-19 pandemic world crisis has sharpened the contradictions of the capitalist system to the point of vaccine wars and revolutionary explosions is being confirmed on a daily basis. In the USA, the number of Covid deaths has now reached 443,817 with over 26,308,290 cases so far. The richest...