Monthly Archives: September 2021
Over 660 frontline healthcare, community, social and education workers have called for the Policing Bill to be scrapped ahead of a key debate in the House of Lords next week. In a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, sent on Monday 13 September, the signatories warned that the Serious Violence...
TRADES Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O’Grady’s speech to its annual conference contained no call for action from the unions to fight Tory attacks on the working class. Instead, it was an open appeal for the Tories to bring the trade leaders on board to collaborate in rescuing a...
THE NHS is 50,000 doctors short new British Medical Association (BMA) re-search released yesterday has found. The number of doctors in England has fallen even further behind comparable European Union nations, with an estimated shortfall of 50,000 doctors ahead of what is expected to be one of the worst winters...
DOCTORS, nurses and teachers have warned that the Police Bill will turn them into police informants. The Bill, to be debated in the House of Lords this week, gives the police sweeping new powers to shut down protests that are ‘too noisy’, or ‘too disruptive’ as well as forcing frontline...
NORFOLK’s Safeguarding Adults Board (NSAB) on Thursday published an important Safeguarding Adults Review (SAR) into the deaths of three young adults: Joanna, ‘Jon’ and Ben (all in their 30s). They had learning disabilities and had been patients at the privately-run Cawston Park Hospital. They died within a 27-month period (April...
AS THE annual conference of the TUC, this year conducted on-line, opens, the GMB union released analysis of official data showing that 100,000 care workers are ‘trapped’ on Universal Credit. With Universal Credit (UC) about to be slashed by £20 a week on October 6th care workers, along with every...
REPORTS have emerged of students, despite paying thousands of pounds in fees a year for their tuition, are forced to sit on the floor in super-sized lectures. Since the cap on university admissions has come off, university management is packing students in like sardines, as each is worth £9,250...
TRANSPORT union the RMT is stepping up its campaign today against ‘swingeing cuts’ on South Western Railway which will unleash an attack on rail services, jobs and pay unseen since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. South Western Railway and Network Rail have launched a stakeholder consultation that proposes to...
UDARA Sandaruwan, Acting Convenor of the Inter University Students Federation has issued an appeal to trade unions and human rights organisations of the world to oppose the repression of the student and trade union leaders by the Sri Lankan government. He states: ‘There has been serious opposition to the “Kotelawala Act”...
ON THE 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York the FBI released a newly declassified 16-page document detailing their investigations into the support provided to two of the Saudi Arabian hijackers involved. This was the first release of the massive number of documents relating...
US FIREFIGHTERS are dying from asbestos-related diseases as a result of being sent in to clean up after the collapse of the Twin Towers in the 9/11 terror attack and to retrieve gold and silver from the basement. Twenty years to the day of the terror attack, a report from...
PAUL Gambaccini, the Radio 2 DJ, said he is ‘coming for the BBC’ after accusing the Corporation of being complicit in the child abuse ‘witch hunt’. Interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire about the future of Dame Cressida Dick as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Gambaccini said he and other campaigners who had been...
CASH-STRAPPED schools in England have been forced to cut support for special educational needs and disabilities (Send) pupils, a survey has revealed – after up to a third of head teachers had to slash their budgets last year. School heads and leaders union the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT),...
TODAY is exactly two decades after the terror attacks on the United States on 11 September, 2001. That morning, Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two Boeing 767 jets into the Twin Towers within minutes of each other; less than two hours later, both buildings collapsed. The attacks killed 2,606 people in...
THE TORY government have offered the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, a two-year extension to her term in office with campaigners for justice furious at the decision. The decision was made by Tory Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in consultation with the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, and Downing Street. A group of...
Fire contaminants are directly linked to and can increase the risk of cancer and other diseases. The FBU has launched its new trailblazing campaign DECON to inform firefighters on how to better protect themselves, their co-workers and family. The FBU has always been at the forefront fighting for improved health...
US TREASURY Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned congressional leaders that the Treasury will run out of cash next month and the federal government will be forced to default on the federal debt unless Congress agrees to allow it to borrow even more. Yellen issued the stark warning that the...
A VOTE took place last night, fast tracking the Johnson government’s 1.25% hike on National Insurance to pay for social care announced only on Tuesday, with Labour voting against. Labour’s Rachel Reeves, shadow Chancellor, opposing the Bill to bring the hike in, told Parliament yesterday: ‘Sales on property, on financial...
AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) workers are continuing protesting outside party headquarters at Luthuli House in Johannesburg demanding fair labour practices and salary payments. The ANC employees downed tools two weeks ago following two months of unpaid salaries. The party’s serious financial crunch was expected to be discussed in last weekend’s ANC...
ISRAEL was dealt a massive humiliating blow early Monday morning when six Palestinian prisoners tunnelled their way out of the Gilbao maximum-security jail. Five of the six were members of the resistance movement Islamic Jihad and the other was Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. According...
‘WE WILL FIX the long term problems of health and social care that have been so cruelly exposed by Covid,’ Tory PM Johnson said yesterday, announcing that workers, in particular young workers, will be hit by a National Insurance hike of 1.25%. Continuing the ‘beat the poor’ theme, Tory Chancellor...
IN A REPORT on Palestinian resistance fighters held in Israeli prisons through to the end of August, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said on Monday that out of 4,650 incarcerated Palestinians held in 23 prisons, detention and interrogation centres, there are 200 minors and 40 women. The report was published...
TORY PM Boris Johnson yesterday unveiled his strategy for ‘fixing’ the country’s ‘broken social care system’. Central to his plan is to increase National Insurance (NI) contributions by 1.25%, an increase that would hit young people and the low paid hardest with workers earning £30,000 a year paying an extra...
PALESTINIAN resistance movement Hamas yesterday denounced the latest Israeli airstrikes against the Gaza Strip, describing them as a desperate attempt by the regime to cover up its abject failure in the case of the recent Palestinian jailbreak. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the Israeli military carried out the airstrikes on the...
ANHAR AL-DEEK, the Palestinian woman who was set to give birth in an Israeli prison, has been released to house arrest in a victory for her campaign. Israel’s Ofer military court in the occupied West Bank agreed to release her conditionally on Thursday and imposed a bail of $12,500. She will...
THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic has taken a back seat in the news recently. Most public health restrictions in relation to the pandemic were lifted on 19 July, on Boris Johnson’s ‘Freedom Day’, such as the social distancing requirements, and mask wearing. All businesses could open. Then on 16 August, the need to...
THE US Wall Street is fast heading for a crash according to the Bank of America (BoA) as the huge speculative bubble on the stock market shows all the signs of exploding very shortly. The BoA is worried about the results from its Sell Side Indicator (SSI), a measure of...
IRAN’S Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tehran is ready to sell more fuel to the Lebanese government and businessmen if need be, as an Iranian ship transporting fuel for the crisis-hit country entered Syria’s territorial waters. In a Friday phone call with Gebran Bassil, the former Lebanese minister of foreign...
THE END of September is ‘payback time’ for the working class as far as the Tories are concerned. This is when all the debt incurred to keep a bankrupt British capitalist system from crashing during the pandemic will have to be paid back through savage cuts to workers benefits and...
UNIVERSITY lecturers are gearing up for strike action against cuts to their pensions. Universities UK’s (UUK) announced yesterday that cuts to the pensions of university staff will go ahead after the agreement of the pensions’ trustees. A mass meeting of UCU members was called yesterday to discuss industrial action over...
‘NOTHING is going to happen to it until we say so,’ Karim Musilly from Genfell United said defiantly yesterday, responding to reports that the Tory government will announce the demolition of the Grenfell Tower. Tory Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, said that he has been told that the building poses a...
GREEK state hospitals workers and doctors are fighting back against a government vaccination law which has led to unpaid ‘suspension from work’ of some 3,800 workers. These are workers who have not as yet been vaccinated or have refused, as a form of protest, to present to the hospitals’ directors...
THE TORIES are pushing for a rise in the National Insurance rate, affecting over 25 million workers to pay for social care. For someone on average earnings of £29,536 a year, a 1% increase in National Insurance would cost them £199.68 annually; however the percentage has not been agreed and...
THE UNIVERSITY and College Union (UCU) has warned all UK colleges and universities that they may face industrial disputes if they misuse recorded lectures by withhold- ing performance rights from staff. The call comes as three out of five universities have said that most lectures will remain online as they...
A NEW report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University has exposed the death toll of imperialist wars across the globe. It has exposed the total death and destruction, the financial cost of war, along with highlighting the immense profits enjoyed by the weapons manufacturers. According to...
THE TRADES Union Congress (TUC) complained yesterday that they have been barred from a seat at the table, demanding involvement in the trade negotiations between the government and foreign powers. Tory PM Johnson’s government is blocking trade unions from sensitive trade talks despite unions’ offers to ‘sign confidentiality agreements’, according...
THE US ‘war on terror’ has taken almost one million lives across the globe and has cost the country $8 trillion over the past two decades, says a new report released yesterday. The report, issued by Costs of War Project at Brown University at the end of the disastrous US withdrawal...
HUNDREDS of Ontario emergency room physicians have signed an open letter to State Premier Doug Ford demanding that the province increase the pay of critical-care nurses and repeal Bill 124. Bill 124 is otherwise known as: ‘Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act 2019.’ It is a law in...
THE CRISIS in the NHS has reached a breaking point with NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation issuing an unprecedented joint report calling for the Tories to put an extra £10 billion into the health service next year. If this funding is not made available, they warn that the backlog...
TORY Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab appeared before MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, where he was questioned about the end of the UK’s role in the US-led bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan lasting 20-years. Raab brushed aside different members of the committee’s repeated calls for him to resign. When...
STAFF that work for the Labour Party have voted in favour of striking if Labour carry out their threat of redundancies, GMB and Unite announced yesterday. The GMB union ballot result shows 75% of members in favour of industrial action if cuts go ahead. The indicative ballot closed on August 31,...
SEEKING healthcare in Taiz, a city split by a frontline, is a Medecins Sans Frontieres feature on Yemen which has been under deadly assault by a US-backed Saudi-led coalition since 2015. ‘The constant fear and the feeling of being close to death is horrific,’ says Wafa Muhammad Abdullah. ‘We have been...
ONE SURE SIGN that capitalism is rapidly heading for an economic crash of historic proportions is the regularity in which increasingly desperate articles are appearing in the financial pages of the bourgeois press. Last week, the Daily Telegraph carried an article by Allister Heath headlined ‘Four mega-trends that condemn the...
TRANSPORT union RMT confirmed yesterday that Rail Gourmet staff at Edinburgh Waverley will be going ahead with a new phase of strike action in an on-going fight for respect and justice in the workplace as the company escalates abuse and bullying of staff. As a result of the continued failure...
THE TALIBAN ‘seeks to build a political system and government in Afghanistan that would be approved by its people and accountable to people once the occupying foreign forces leave,’ a spokesman said on Monday. ‘The Islamic Emirate is determined to have a political system that is approved by our people...