Monthly Archives: October 2021
‘UNDERHAND’ plans to fire 50 GB Terminals workers who unload and process Volkswagens at Sheerness docks in Kent have been slammed as a ‘sneaky precursor to fire and rehire’ by the Unite union. The redundancies amount to a staffing reduction of 75 per cent and will leave the company’s Sheerness...
IRAN’S permanent ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the UN Security Council must fulfill its responsibilities and compel the Israeli regime to put an immediate end to its occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights – and to its acts of aggression against the country. ‘Aggressions and destabilising measures of the...
ISRAEL has approved more than 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. Settlers have spent the last weeks engaging in a reign of terror. It is Palestinian olive harvest season and settlers have been uprooting and burning hundreds of trees on a daily basis, attacking farmers and their...
PATIENTS are being put at ‘catastrophic risk’ of harm due to ambulance handover delays, NHS managers warned yesterday. West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has raised its risk rating for such delays to its highest level for the first time in its history.
That risk rating shows the trust believes patient harm...
THE US has launched a fresh attempt to have WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited from Britain to face charges that could jail him for life. On Wednesday, lawyers for the US appealed against a British judge’s decision to block the 50-year-old Australian’s extradition, arguing that concerns around his mental health...
ON WEDNESDAY, the RMT transport union members won a massive victory in their fight against the ‘pitiful’ pay offer from ScotRail. RMT members at ScotRail, presently privately owned but due to be taken over by the SNP led Scottish government, had overwhelmingly rejected the latest pay deal, driven by Nicola...
‘FAMILIES hit by the cost of living crisis, business hit by a supply chain crisis, those who rely on our schools and our hospitals, and our police. They won’t recognise the world that the chancellor is describing,’ Rachel Reeves, Labour shadow chancellor, said yesterday in response to Tory Chancellor...
US LAWYERS yesterday launched a fresh attempt to have Julian Assange extradited from Britain, arguing that concerns about the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health should not prevent him from facing US justice. Lawyers acting for the United States are appealing against a January 4 ruling by a London District Judge that...
Council workers in more than half of Scotland’s local authorities are striking during next month’s COP26 climate summit as part of a rapidly escalating fight over public sector pay. Railway workers employed by ScotRail have also voted to reject the privateer’s miserly pay offer and are also striking during COP26. Trade...
TORY chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday unveiled the government’s spending plans in a budget he billed as preparing the country for a new ‘age of optimism’, assuring his Tory colleagues that he ‘will deliver a stronger economy for the British people.’ With British capitalism stagnating and teetering over the brink of...
CASES of police abusing their role for sexual gain have risen sharply, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) warned yesterday, revealing the fact that 66 officers and staff have faced misconduct proceedings in England and Wales in the past three years. The IOPC said the perpetrators have ‘no place...
The national leadership of the largest labour federation in the USA is trying to stop one of its affiliates from debating and voting on a resolution that condemns Israeli violence against Palestinians, calls for an end to US aid to Israel, and endorses the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions...
STRIKE action during COP26 (The United Nations Climate Change Conference), from Sunday October 31 to Friday 12 November, is to go ahead after the RMT transport union rejected the latest ‘pitiful’ pay offer from ScotRail. Delegates to the RMT’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Leeds have voted to reject a...
THOUSANDS took to the streets of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum yesterday, to demand the release of the political leaders amid reports of clashes and gunfire. The protesters shouted ‘No to military rule!’ The internet has been cut off, while roads and bridges in Khartoum have been blocked. The airport has also...
IRAN’S security chief has brushed aside reports about Israel’s budget for a potential attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, warning the Zionist regime that it would also have to be prepared for the colossal cost of repair as Tehran’s response would be ‘shocking’. The Times of Israel, citing a report published...
The US working class has mobilised in an unprecedented wave of mass strikes across the country this month in what is being designated as ‘Striketober’. Over ten thousand workers at 14 John Deere plants walked out on October 14 closing down the US’s largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment. Their strike followed...
‘FAILURE to invest more now to tackle the nursing workforce crisis will mean disaster for the health and care services this winter,’ the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned yesterday. The nurses’ union urged Tory Chancellor Sunak to ‘pull health and care back from the brink by announcing more funding’. The...
OVER 3,000 people marched through London from the BBC in Portland Place to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand to fight for the release of Julian Assange on Saturday afternoon. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, 27th and 28th October, the High Court is hearing the US government’s...
THE TUC General Council has met and issued a statement on the crisis. In it, it disgracefully treats the Tory government as a potential partner, not as the leader of the big business class of super-exploiters. It stated: ‘The government must act now to reduce the spread of Covid. Failure...
PRODUCTION of the MINI at Oxford could be severely disrupted after drivers delivering components voted to go on strike for six days in a pay dispute, Unite the Union warned today (Friday 22 October). The large goods vehicle (LGV) drivers employed by Imperial Logistics International (UK) voted by 94 per...
MORE than one in ten ‘affordable’ new homes planned by housing associations can no longer be built due to the costs of making buildings safe following the Grenfell Tower fire – and it is ‘social rent’ homes that are the ones taking the hit. This is because building safety costs...
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange, the man who dared to expose imperialist war crimes, must be immediately released from Belmarsh high security prison where he has been incarcerated for the last two-and-a-half years. In January, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Assange must not be extradited to the US where he...
‘DON’T make the £141bn student debt nightmare worse,’ the University and College Union (UCU) warned yesterday ahead of a government spending review. University staff have demanded plans to hit more students with loan repayments to be halted. In a letter to new Tory Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi, the University and College...
UNIONS in South Africa are urging the government to join and back a global call against asbestos use – and for a total ban, particularly in workplaces, on asbestos use both there and in construction, as called for by the Rotterdam Convention. BWI’s (Building and Woodworkers’ International’s) South African affiliates...
THE US, the most powerful economy in the world, has already crashed into a recession that will shatter the capitalist world. This is the inescapable conclusion of two leading bourgeois economists as ‘bad news’ piles up at the door of the US economy with prices of everyday goods rising sharply...
COVID restrictions must immediately be reintroduced if England is to avoid ‘stumbling into a winter crisis,’ health leaders have warned. The NHS Confederation said a back-up strategy, or Plan B, which includes mandatory face coverings in crowded and enclosed spaces, should be implemented.
UK cases have been rising sharply but deaths...
UNITE is warning that the refusal of the nation’s port employers to make fair pay offers to their workers could result in a national dock strike, causing disruption to the nation’s supply chain. Over a 1,000 dockers are currently preparing to be balloted for strike action. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:...
Value Engineering Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry
By Richard Norton-Taylor
Produced and directed by Nicolas Kent
The Tabernacle
Powis Square, London W11
13 October-13 November 2021
Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham
16 November-
20 November 2021 REVIEW BY STUART EAMES Writer, director and an ensemble cast have skillfully recreated the drama of the Grenfell Inquiry into the inferno that cost 72...
COVID restrictions must immediately be reintroduced if England is to avoid ‘stumbling into a winter crisis’ Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS Confederation, has warned. Taylor told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday that ‘the health service is right at the edge’ as the Covid pandemic is once again ripping...
THOUSANDS of GPs in England have told the British Medical Association (BMA) that Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s package of measures to supposedly rescue general practice is useless. 93% of respondents surveyed by the BMA say it is an unacceptable response to the current crisis. Almost 3,500 GPs in England took part...
Amnesty International UK has condemned an ‘Alarming rise in state-sanctioned violence and discrimination against Muslims’ in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s Muslim community has suffered consistent discrimination, harassment and violence since 2013, culminating in the adoption of government policies explicitly targeting the minority group, Amnesty International said in a new report...
WITH the US, EU and the UK capitalist economies and regimes in a growing and desperate economic and political crisis, the imperialist powers are being driven to step up their war preparations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced yesterday that Russia is suspending its mission to NATO as tensions sharpen...
THE ROYAL College of Nursing (RCN) yesterday announced the dates for the indicative ballot for strike action demanding a 12.5% pay increase. The ballot opens on 4th November and runs until 30 November. This decision follows a consultative ballot on the 3% pay award announced by ministers in July, in which 92%...
HUNDREDS of Palestinians held a mass demonstration throughout the Israeli-occupied territories to express their deep resentment over the rising levels of violent attacks on their communities and the Israeli police’s collaboration with criminal gangs. Protesters converged on Land Day Square in Deir Hanna, (23 kilometres southeast of Acre) on Saturday evening...
THE GOVERNOR of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has issued the starkest warning that the UK economy faces a massive inflationary spiral and that the Bank will ‘have to act’ – and fast. This is the clearest indication by Bailey that the Bank is preparing a sharp increase in...
THE UCU (University and College Union) begins balloting members today for strike action at over 150 universities across the country, with higher education set to close down before Xmas. The union is balloting its members to strike against cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions, falling pay, the use...
THE NATIONAL Union of Journalists (NUJ) has called for an official investigation into the reporting of police misconduct cases. The Times newspaper has alleged that ‘misconduct hearings are often surrounded in secrecy and journalists are blocked from getting information’.
Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said: ‘The findings by The Times which...
SOUTHEASTERN rail collapsed into public ownership yesterday with the RMT revealing the true cost of the government’s slavish devotion to subsidising private profit capitalism. In its new report titled ‘The unbearable cost of failure: Private profiteering on Great British Railways’, the RMT reveals that During the pandemic year, when the...
AS Southeastern rail franchise passes into public ownership this Sunday, the RMT transport union has revealed the true cost of private sector failure and is calling on the government to ‘finish the job, cut out the spivs and stop the cuts’. Following the latest catastrophic private sector failure, RMT has...
A KEY education union campaign to stop BTec vocational qualifications being scrapped within two years has won backing from both MPs and even lords across the parliamentary parties. Some 118 have written to Tory Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi asking him to re-think plans to use T-levels to replace them in...
THE TORY government has launched a vicious war against GPs. 778 GP surgeries have closed in the last eight years alone, forcing patients to move to a different doctor. The remaining GPs have had to take on larger and larger catchment areas with thousands more patients to care for. The average...
THE TORY government turned its fire onto GPs yesterday provoking an angry response from the trade unions. Under new measures announced yesterday GPs will be forced to engage in face-to-face consultations with patients or face being made to merge with other GP surgeries. The new measures were billed as a...
THE ARMED wing of the British capitalist state is being torn apart by ‘internal warfare’, according to a report in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. This major split has been thrust into the public limelight by the suicide of Major General Matthew Holmes who had been the head of the Royal Marines...
EMPLOYERS in the steel and engineering industry have upped their salary increase offer to striking workers affiliated to the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) in the hope of ending a damaging strike now entering its second week. The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa), the...