Monthly Archives: June 2021
POLICE officer Benjamin Monk has been jailed for eight years after being sentenced yesterday. He was convicted of the manslaughter of ex-footballer Dalian Atkinson in 2016. Monk deployed his Taser against Atkinson. Twice he was unsuccessful at incapacitating him, but on the third deployment he overrode the trigger for 33...
Liberty, the human rights organisation, has written to Transport for London (TfL) and Camden Council warning that recent threats issued to rough sleepers may breach human rights laws. In a letter sent this month, Liberty, on behalf of homeless support group Streets Kitchen, said notices placed outside Warren Street station...
THE SECOND round of the French regional elections last Sunday confirmed that the French workers have had enough of the bourgeois, Bonapartist, fascist and reformist parties by staying at home en masse. Over 34 million voters abstained, with the major losers being the would-be Bonaparte, President Macron, and his main...
‘MY TASK is to return the economic and cultural life that makes this country so great,’ new Tory Health Secretary, Sajid Javid said in his first statement to Parliament in that role yesterday. Javid was appointed after Health Secretary Matt Hancock was forced to quit after being photographed in a...
LAST Wednesday, a Russian patrol ship and fighter jet fired warning shots and dropped bombs along the path of a British destroyer that had veered into Russian territorial waters off Crimea in the Black Sea. London initially denied that any incident took place, claiming that the Royal Navy ship was...
FORMER Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid has been installed as Health Secretary to replace the disgraced Matt Hancock, with a remit to ‘open up’ British capitalism regardless of the deadly spread of the Delta Covid variant throughout the country. Javid made his priority absolutely clear to journalists on...
HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock was forced to resign on Saturday afternoon despite repeated public statements from PM Boris Johnson that he retained his full confidence. Hancock quit after a still frame from a video of him kissing and embracing his colleague Gina Coladangelo inside the Department of Health on 6th...
FROM ELECTRONIC INTIFADA By M El Haj-Ahmed A translator and teacher from Gaza A MONTH has passed since Israel’s 11-day attack on Gaza came to an end.
While we are glad that the attack is over, adjusting to everyday reality has not been easy.
It has not helped that Israel has already carried...
BRITISH capitalism is in a desperate economic and political crisis that calls for truly desperate measures by the ruling class. The use of the capitalist state is at the centre of these measures as the dumping of Health Secretary Hancock has just shown. PM Johnson had refused to sack Hancock despite...
THE US Senate finally agreed on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. This huge sum was in fact just half of what Biden wanted – he had requested $2.3 trillion for his ‘coronavirus stimulus’ package. The deal, worth an eyewatering £860bn, accompanies an eight-year plan to fund roads, bridges, the power...
FORMER chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) Robert Black told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry last week that ‘a failure to fulfil his role had contributed towards historic safety issues’ in the block. The chief executive of the management body of Grenfell Tower has blamed his staff...
PATSY Stevenson has warned the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in a pre-action letter that she intends to initiate legal proceedings against the Metropolitan Police should they not withdraw a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) issued to her following her arrest at the Clapham Common Vigil for Sarah Everard on...
THE TORY government is to blame for the suffering faced by university staff and students, the University College Union (UCU) has underlined. Responding to the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) student academic experience survey, UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Both staff and students have suffered enormously this year.
‘The fault...
ON WEDNESDAY, Britain staged a deliberate provocation when it sent the warship HMS Defender steaming through Russian territorial waters in the Black Sea. The Defender entered the Black Sea last week with the Royal Netherlands Navy’s frigate HNLMS Evertsen to carry out a joint exercise with the USS Laboon guided-missile/interceptor-missile...
DURING their five-day strike which concludes today, hospital staff working for SERCO gathered for a lively union rally at the Royal London Hospital at noon yesterday, to step up their action against roster changes forced on them by the private company. The air was filled with the sounds of vuvuzelas...
THE US Justice Department has seized 33 Iranian government-affiliated media websites, as well as three of the Iraqi group Kataeb Hezbollah, which it said were hosted on US-owned domains in violation of sanctions. This is a major attempt by the US to silence the growing support all over the world...
WITH RMT members ‘rock solid’ in their latest day of strike action at Abellio ScotRail and Serco Caledonian Sleeper on Sunday, the railworkers union is demanding to know how much has been paid out to the rail privateers to fund their profits from Covid-19 Emergency Measures Agreements (EMAs). The rail...
THE WEBSITE of Press TV, the official Iranian English language news site, was seized by the US government on Tuesday, in what amounts to a declaration of war against Iran and all who oppose American imperialism. In all, 33 websites were taken down, including al-Masirah TV, a Yemeni English language...
WORKERS employed by outsourcing giant Serco, who work in the company’s back-of-house catering department at the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel, will stage a demonstration tomorrow (Thursday 24 June) and have called further strike action in the dispute over bullying and unworkable rosters. WHEN: Thursday 24 June at 12:00. WHERE:...
In 3 years NHS learning disability nurse numbers increase by only 22! ‘Lives are being put at risk’ – RCN warns The lives of learning disability patients are being put at risk because the number of specialist nurses caring for them has flatlined, the Royal College of Nursing warned.
The number...
FRENCH bourgeois democracy, and with it French capitalism, is ‘sick’, and both are in a huge existential crisis. On Sunday, a record two-thirds of voters refused to turn out and take part in the first round of the French Regional and Departmental elections. The turn-out collapsed by a massive 16...
A PUBLIC inquiry yesterday heard from students and parents after more than 120 ex pupils at a school for disabled children were caught up in what has been called the worst treatment disaster in NHS history. From 1974 to 1987, those children were offered treatment for haemophilia at Treloar’s College...
WORLD leaders have extended their congratulations to Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi on his victory in Iran’s 2021 presidential election. Raeisi garnered almost 62 per cent of the votes in last Friday’s election with a turnout of 48.8 per cent. He will succeed President Hassan Rouhani who has served two four-year terms...
THE CRISIS in the Tory party sharpened over the weekend, as the requirement to dump the economic collapse of British capitalism onto the backs of workers dominated the government. Last week, Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak made plain his preference for hitting pensions by ending the triple lock guarantee, causing a...
THE TORY government has been plunged into crisis by last Thursday’s Amersham by-election defeat. Around 100 Tory MPs have reportedly joined a WhatsApp group called Planning Concern to lobby against building homes in their constituencies, while others are pointing at Boris Johnson and accusing him of being ‘Labour-lite’ and demanding...
The South African Federations of Trade Unions (SAFTU) remembers the struggle for freedom and democracy by the militant youth of the 1970s. These martyrs, had their blood spilled and accepted the fate of death in the hope that it will ‘nourish the tree(s) that will bear the fruits of freedom.’
45...
THE TORY Party membership is currently teaching its Tory leadership a lesson in ‘class politics’ as the Amersham by-election result shows when the LibDems wiped out the 16,000 Tory majority. This was a safe Tory seat but once the Tory vote grasped that they might have to pay their share...
Gold & Ashes: A photo series by Feruza Afewerki Outdoor Exhibition From the 12th June – 31st August 2021
Freston Road and Bramley Studio, London W10 6SZ
(Near Latimer Road Tube Station)
Photography Curator: Marie Kathrin-Blanck
Exhibition Curator: Bolanie Tajudeen
Exhibition Designer: Saraphina Mattis
REVIEW BY LUCY LAVER FOUR years have passed since the morning of 14th...
THE Lib Dems have pulled off another opportunist by-election victory, overturning a 16,000 Tory majority in a seat that has always voted Conservative. They did this by dumping their support for the HS2 rail line during the by-election.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey then said that this successful manoeuvre at the...
POLICE and private security failed to apprehend the Manchester bomber, the damning report published by the public inquiry has concluded. Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders found there were missed opportunities to prevent the ‘devastating impact’. Saunders revealed there was no security at the venue at all. The teenagers that the...
THE GMB union has slammed as both ‘scandalous and incompetent’ reports that the government sought, at the start of the Covid pandemic, to make self-isolation as hard as possible. GMB National Officer Rachel Harrison promptly responded: ‘Lives will likely have been lost, and higher infection rates will cost the NHS and...
MANCHESTER Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi should have been identified as a threat on the night of the atrocity by those in charge of security, a public inquiry into the 2017 attack has found. Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders found there were missed opportunities to prevent the ‘devastating impact’.
In his...
MORE than one in five pupils are now eligible for free school meals (FSM) following a steep rise during the pandemic, new government data have revealed. Department for Education (DfE) data on schools, pupils and their characteristics, published yesterday morning, show an extra 300,000 pupils became eligible for free school...
THE SOUTH African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) spokesperson Trevor Shaku came out guns blazing and has charged that the Eskom energy production crisis was engineered in order to create opportunities for looting and restructuring, which were allegedly contemplated by Public Enterprise Minister Pravin Gordhan. ‘Just like South Africa Airways...
TORY Chancellor Rishi Sunak this week put every pensioner in the country on notice that along with workers they will be forced to pay for British capitalism’s economic crisis. In a TV interview, Sunak repeatedly refused to confirm that the ‘triple lock’ on state pensions would be maintained, instead insisting...
HOUSE prices rose six times faster than NHS nurses’ pay in last decade. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says nurses’ wages are left in the wake of spiralling living costs like house prices. Nursing staff say they feel undervalued; some say they are leaving the NHS to take higher paying...
BMA research finds doctors are suffering ‘emotional’ and ‘psychological’ distress because they cannot give patients the treatment and care that they need. New research by the BMA (British Medical Association) has revealed doctors are suffering ‘moral distress’ and even ‘moral injury’ because they cannot give their patients the care and...
THE LONG independent report into the murder of 37-year-old private detective Daniel Morgan in south London in 1987 was finally published on Tuesday and was a damning indictment of the entire Metropolitan Police force from top to bottom. The 1,200 page report produced evidence that Scotland Yard had repeatedly covered...
AN independent panel has accused the Metropolitan Police of ‘a form of institutional corruption’ for concealing or denying failings over the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987. This is the most serious charge against the Met since the McPherson Inquiry of 1999 found that it was institutionally...
THE NUMBER of children in child labour has risen to 160 million worldwide – an increase of 8.4 million in the last four years. These are the findings in a new report: Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and...
CANADIAN workers on June 14th prevented an Israeli container ship from unloading by forming a picket line at the entrance to the Fairview container terminal. They refused to let the vessel, The Volans, owned by the Israeli shipping company ZIM, to berth at Prince Rupert Port. The pickets said they...
NIGERIANS on Saturday staged protests and rallies throughout the country to mark the second anniversary of the declaration of June 12 as ‘Democracy Day’ demanding ‘Buhari Must Go.’ Over a thousand attended a protest in London along with protests in South Africa and the United States. In the Nigerian capital Abuja,...
THE THREE-day meeting of leaders of the G7 nations ended with an open attack on China that included the demand that it carries out a ‘full and thorough’ investigation of the universally discredited claim that coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory. The final communiqué from this summit also contained a...
AHEAD of today’s fourth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire of 14th June 2017, survivors and bereaved relatives have condemned the lack of progress towards justice for Grenfell, with no-one held responsible, no prosecutions and some former residents still not rehoused! Former Grenfell resident Joseph John said yesterday: ‘I’m a...