Monthly Archives: August 2021
UNITE, with a membership of 1.4 million, wielding the power to strike and shut down vast proportions of industry, has reduced itself to begging the bosses’ Tory government instead of taking action to remove it! The union’s latest statement calls for the Tory government to ‘think again’ over ending the...
GATWICK Airport is in talks with bank lenders to try to avoid defaulting on multi-million pound loans, as Covid restrictions contribute to huge losses. The UK’s second biggest airport said travel restrictions and the coronavirus collapse in demand meant a £204m pre-tax loss in the first half of the year. Gatwick...
A RECORD number of people, more than 5.45 million, are waiting for NHS hospital treatment in England. Responding to the latest NHS England performance data, RCN England Director, Patricia Marquis, said: ‘These figures are a stark reminder of the huge pressure health and care staff are still under. ‘With a record...
AS THE TALIBAN fighters continue to make rapid advances across Afghanistan, the militants have captured another provincial capital in the northern part of the war-ravaged country, taking the number of cities they have seized since last Friday to nine in the latest setback for the Afghan government. The latest city...
ISRAEL has ordered Palestinian landowners to evacuate their land in the town of Tuqu’ in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli authorities on Wednesday said that they must ‘evacuate’ their land, and remove all the cattle corrals there within 14 days. According to the mayor, Palestinian livestock keepers...
THE FORMER schools ‘catch-up tsar’, Sir Kevan Collins, says he is worried about the vast gap in in the just announced A-level results between state and private school pupils. His main concern is that the ‘educational legacy of Covid will be growing inequality’. The latest A-level results, decided on by teachers,...
MASS demonstrations have been taking place over the past weeks in Paris and other major French cities against the Macron government’s dictatorial health bill. And as of last Monday, people in France now need to show a health pass to enjoy usually routine activities such as sipping coffee in a...
THE TORY policy of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for the Windrush Generation – the thousands of men, women and their children that came over from the Caribbean to help rebuild the UK after the war – took another vicious step on Tuesday with an attempt at the mass deportation...
THREE education unions wrote to the Tory Education Secretary Gavin Williamson yesterday expressing ‘anger and dismay’ at the way the government has treated school and college leaders. Their letter highlights the fact that, a week before the beginning of term for some schools and no more than 14 working days...
‘IT IS seven months since Julian’s extradition was blocked by Judge Vanessa Baraitser, yet he has remained in prison, suffering and isolated, despite having committed no crime. It took the court six months to decide whether to grant the US government permission to appeal. Permission has been granted on a...
THERE is no doubt that the humiliating UK-US rout in Afghanistan is a colossal victory for the Taliban, and all oppressed nations, and at the least has demonstrated emphatically once again that US imperialism cannot win a land war in Central Asia. It is now known that the UK was...
THE overwhelming of NHS hospitals by Covid patients in successive waves has led to a large reduction in care for heart patients, with consequent record deaths from heart disease during the pandemic. This topic is discussed in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 7- 14 August 2021 ‘Re starting NHS cardiovascular...
ON SUNDAY, thousands of Yemenis marched through the streets of the capital Sana’a against the US/Saudi blockade of their country and holding American imperialism responsible for an economic war that has pushed Yemen to the brink of outright famine. The US-backed war by a Saudi Arabian-led military coalition against the...
THE TORIES are in talks with private healthcare companies to deal with the backlog of thousands of NHS patients by farming them out, at great expense, making huge profits for the privateers. A wave of new deals between the NHS and private hospital firms will cost the taxpayer more than...
A DISPUTE over salary increases for workers in South Africa’s steel and engineering industry has been called by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. The NUMSA union is threatening a strike in an industry that has taken a R50-billion hit during recent social unrest.
A general strike in the...
ONE year after the explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4, 2020, killing 218 people, injuring more than 7,000 and devastating much of the city, the Lebanese investigation into the blast has yielded zero results. Last week, saw people who have suffered the loss of their loved ones in the...
TWENTY-ONE firefighters from the UK left yesterday evening for Greece to assist firefighters out there, in an international effort to tackle the raging wildfires. Tony Brown group manager at Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service spoke from the airport on his way out to Greece. Brown said: ‘We have got a team...
THE BMA is to survey junior doctors on possible action to take following massive anger over their exclusion from the NHS ‘pay award’. The BMA will survey tens of thousands of its junior doctor members in England to find out what they think of the government’s decision to exclude them...
IN HASAKA earlier this week, the US occupation forces brought out a convoy loaded with stolen Syrian oil via the illegitimate al-Walid border crossing from Syrian territory to north Iraq. Local sources from al-Yaroubiya countryside in Hasaka northeastern countryside told a SANA reporter the convoy ‘consisted of 25 tanks affiliated...
JUNIOR doctors have been excluded from any NHS pay rise, and they are furious. Yesterday, their union, the British Medical Association (BMA), announced they would be surveyed for strike action. This, of course, would not be their first time they have been forced into taking strike action. Junior doctors had...
HUNDREDS of Lebanese marched to mark the first anniversary of the Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people. Lebanese police clashed with angry protesters demanding accountability for last year’s explosion, a short distance from the main event marking the tragedy’s first anniversary. The scuffles near parliament in central Beirut...
GP SURGERIES are under threat of closure or will be forced to reduce services this winter as pressure mounts, Local Medical Committees (LMCs) have warned. The GP leaders said: ‘GP practices face the very real prospect of having to close temporarily or permanently this winter among rising workload and staffing...
THE ANGER expressed by Ealing Parking Service workers at the way in which the Unite leadership has sold their strike down the river reflects the growing anger of workers at the increasing desperation of trade union leaders to call off and undermine any struggle against the bosses. Nearly 50 civil...
SEVEN African Arab states have rejected a recent decision by the African Union (AU) Commission to grant the Israeli regime an observer status at the continental body. Several Arab media outlets, including London-based al-Araby Al-Jadeed, reported that the embassies of Algeria, Egypt, Comoros, Tunisia, Djibouti, Mauritania and Libya in Ethiopia...
IMPERIALIST preparations for war against Iran were ramped up even further on Tuesday with completely unsubstantiated claims that Iran was responsible for the ‘hijacking’ of a tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman. The circumstances surrounding this alleged hijack of the Asphalt Princess...
EALING Parking Service workers are angry at the way in which their strike has been sold out. Unite Branch Secretary Harjinder Nagi told News Line yesterday morning: ‘It was a very low turn out. The meeting on Tuesday was poorly arranged. If it had been arranged properly, there would definitely...
AN inspector general appointed by the US Congress to examine the war in Afghanistan has listed Washington’s failures in the 20 years of war in the Asian country, and says the US is bound to repeat those mistakes. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said on...
A YEAR after the massive explosion at Beirut Port devastated the Lebanese capital, the victims’ grieving families are still waiting for answers, accountability and justice. More than 200 people were killed and 6,500 wounded when hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertiliser, stored in the port for six...
AMBULANCE staff are at breaking point, with the union Unison raising the alarm yesterday that services are facing unprecedented 999 call volumes and unsustainable pressure. The union has written to ambulance service chiefs calling for urgent support, and their letter to Daren Mochrie, chair of the Association of Ambulance Chief...
CONGRESSWOMAN Cori Bush has spent a night on the steps of the US Capitol to protest against the end of a Covid-related moratorium on evictions. She was joined by other Progressive Democratic Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar.
The House Democrat said shortly before the freeze expired at midnight on Saturday...
AT THE weekend, The Telegraph newspaper reported that Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak is ‘mulling’ over his options for breaking the triple lock on pensions – effectively plunging millions of UK pensioners into extreme poverty. The triple lock, a cast iron guarantee in the last Tory party manifesto, commits the government...
MASSES of people surrounded the Israeli High Court yesterday protesting against the eviction of families in the Sheikh Jarrah district of Jerusalem. Israel’s supreme court was holding a hearing yesterday on the case of Palestinian families facing expulsion by Israeli settlers in annexed east Jerusalem, an issue that sparked conflict...
FRENCH President Macron’s dictatorial new health law and its passage through parliament has angered a vast swathe of workers, youth and the middle class. On July 22, a forum was signed by dozens of leaders of France’s trade unions, associations and political parties, health, elected officials and personalities, from very...
THE Johnson government stepped up its attack on the UK working class yesterday by reducing its furloughing payments to workers to 60% with the employers to pay 20%. Already one-in-five firms plan to sack workers in response to Sunday’s furlough policy change, which will see employers contribute more, a British...
ONE-IN-FIVE companies are planning to sack workers in response to yesterday’s cut in furlough payments, a British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) survey has found. From yesterday government payments were reduced to 60% towards the salaries of furloughed workers, with employers expected to pay 20%. According to the most recent figures up...