Monthly Archives: January 2022
THE £12bn rise in National Insurance Contributions (NIC) from April is ‘the right plan’ and ‘must go ahead’, Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak said in a joint article in yesterday’s Sunday Times newspaper. PM Johnson had been wobbling over the issue and was said to be for the ‘rise’...
STRIKING Clover workers marched in Johannesburg last Thursday demanding that the company halt retrenchments and wage cuts. The workers also picketed outside the Israel Trade and Economic Office. They want Clover to be independent of the Israeli company Central Bottling Company.
Police have opened a murder docket following the death on...
PM JOHNSON’S decision to bloc with Chancellor Sunak to see that National Insurance Contributions are raised in April by £12.9 billion has widened the split in the Tory Party, well beyond the attempts by the Met Police to keep the different factions from publicly, politically cutting each others throats...
THE SPLIT in the Tory Party over the planned hike in National Insurance (NI) has got wider and deeper! Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s proposed 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance contributions (NICs) will hit workers for six, and he is insisting that it must remain, to slash the Tory...
GPs at Handsworth Medical Practice have been praised for their efforts helping victims of a bus crash at Highams Park in North East London on Tuesday. The bus crashed into a shop on Selwyn Avenue in Highams Park, Chingford, on Tuesday 25th January at around 8.20am.
A London Ambulance Service spokesperson...
THE METROPOLITAN Police have thrown a spanner into the works of the rapidly developing crisis in the Tory government and party. There is now confusion over when senior Civil Servant, Sue Gray’s report into the illegal Number 10 lockdown parties will be published, after a statement from the police on...
MEMBERS of Parliament are to debate a demand that the government restores England’s publicly provided NHS by reversing all privatising legislation, including ending private finance initiative (PFI) contracts. The debate, set for Monday, has been granted by the government after over 135,000 people signed a petition launched by Unite the...
DISABLED Grenfell campaigners are shocked and outraged at the reappointment of the very same firm that wrote fire safety guidance before the Grenfell Tower fire to write new guidance on evacuations in light of the terrible disaster. After the outcry the Home Office has now promised to ‘look into’ the...
THE LATEST Tory onslaught on the unemployed was revealed by Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday when he praised the ‘Way to Work’ policy as evidence that his government were focused on dragging British capitalism out of economic collapse. Under the ‘Way to Work’ the unemployed will...
JOHNSON’S Tory government have stepped up their war on the unemployed ratcheting up the sanctions regime, which leaves some of the most vulnerable people without a penny to feed themselves or their children, heat or light their home or pay rent. As of yesterday people will have to look outside...
‘THE MINISTERIAL Code says that ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation,’ Labour leader Keir Starmer said during PMQs yesterday lunch-time, asking of PM Johnson: ‘Does the Prime Minister believe that applies to him?’ Johnson replied: ‘Of course, but let me tell the House, because...
THE PALESTINIAN resistance will finally succeed in lifting Israel’s years-long siege on the impoverished Gaza Strip and commence its reconstruction, the resistance movement Hamas says. In a press statement, carried by the Palestinian Information Centre, Hamas Political Bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk said on Sunday that all options are on...
THE TORY government is being ripped apart from top to bottom, with every day bringing new reports of ministers fighting amongst themselves in a desperate attempt to cling on to power. The latest row which is splitting the Tory leadership, is over the 1.5% increase in National Insurance Contributions (NI)...
‘IF PRESIDENT Putin were to choose the path of bloodshed and destruction he must realise it would be both tragic and futile,’ Tory PM Johnson said, beating the war drums against Russia yesterday in the House of Commons, a position Labour leader Keir Starmer backed to the hilt. Johnson continued:...
THE METROPOLITAN police are investigating allegations surrounding parties at Downing Street and in Whitehall, M-et Chief Cressida Dick said yesterday, with the Sue Gray internal report now likely to be delayed. In an urgent question in the House of Commons, yesterday, Deputy Labour leader Angela Raynor said: ‘If any evidence...
A NEW report from the International Council of Nurses calls for a global action plan to address the ‘nursing workforce crisis and prevent an avoidable healthcare disaster’. The report, published on Monday, reveals how the Covid-19 pandemic has made the fragile state of the global nursing workforce much worse, putting...
FIRE BRIGADES Union lawyer Martin Seaward has told the Grenfell Inquiry that the disaster was caused by individual private companies and the government! He insisted: ‘It is particularly wrong to blame the individual firefighters and control staff who attended the disaster in its early stages.’ Seaward added: ‘The London Fire Brigade’s...
AN NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) promoting media freedom says at least 17 Palestinian journalists are currently being held in harsh conditions in Israeli jails in contradiction of international law and they condemn the regime for practicing ‘organised terrorism’ to silence Palestinian media. The Journalists’ Support Committee (JSC) said in a statement...
THE CONSERVATIVE Party is tearing itself apart this week as Tory MPs await with trepidation the result of the inquiry by Sue Gray into the so-called ‘party-gate’ scandal that has submerged Boris Johnson’s premiership and implicated leading members of his administration in cover-ups. While the jury is out on whether...
HUNDREDS of key NHS workers, employed by the giant outsourcing company Serco, will stage a two week strike across Barts Health NHS Trust in ‘a battle against low pay and exploitation’, their union Unite announced yesterday. Unite members who are cleaners, porters, security, catering and reception staff across St Barts,...
‘MAKE no mistake we won today in court,’ Stella Moris, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s fiancee said to cheers outside the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday morning. Moris said: ‘The Supreme Court has good grounds to hear this appeal. ‘The situation now is that the Supreme Court has to decide if it...
IRAN, Russia, and China have kicked off joint military drills in the north of the Indian Ocean, with vessels from the three countries hitting pre-determined targets at sea. The ‘2022 Marine Security Belt’ exercise, which began on Friday morning, marks the third of such joint exercises between the three countries.
‘Together...
GERMANY’S navy chief has resigned from his post after drawing criticism from the German government and Ukraine over his remarks in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ‘I have asked Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht to relieve me from my duties with immediate effect,’ Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach said in a...
BANKER Richard Meddings has been appointed as the new chairman of NHS England. Meddings, who is also a non-executive director at Credit Suisse will replace the current chair Lord David Prior in March and will be paid £63,000 per year for working two to three days a week. Health Secretary Sajid...
NOT ONE of the social housing blocks granted building safety funding have had their remediation work completed yet, the latest figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have revealed. Almost five years after the Grenfell Tower fire which claimed the lives of 72 men, women and...
BRITISH forces arrived yesterday in Ukraine to ‘train up Ukrainian troops’ while the US has sent in weapons, to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to be taken to the front line in Ukraine. Several European nations have now moved to bolster NATO’s military deployment in eastern Europe. Spain is sending warships...
US SECRETARY of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met for talks in Geneva yesterday. ‘This is a critical moment,’ Blinken said in his opening remarks. The US and Russia ‘don’t expect to resolve our differences here today’, he added, but hoped to test whether diplomacy was still...
RUSSIA has ruled out any further talks with the United States and NATO over the situation around Ukraine unless the West responds properly to its security demands. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the remark at a joint press conference with visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Tuesday, saying...
THE TORIES have pledged to dump all existing Covid restrictions in the next few weeks in England and ‘get life completely back to normal’. On Wednesday, Boris Johnson announced that he was dumping his Plan B for dealing with the Covid virus, an announcement that had nothing to do with...
THE GRENFELL community spoke out in furious anger yesterday that a building almost two and a half times taller then the Grenfell Tower is being granted planning permission despite it only having one fire escape staircase. The planned skyscraper, which will be situated next to the Westfield shopping centre in...
FOOD costs and energy bills are soaring, with the energy crisis driving consumer prices up at the fastest rate in 30 years, latest figures show. Consumer price inflation surged to 5.4% in the 12 months to December, up from 5.1% the month before, in another blow to struggling families. The last...
OFFICIAL figures have confirmed that consumer price inflation surged to 5.4% in 12 months to December – up from 5.1% month before – the highest level in 30 years. When gas and electricity prices soar in April, when the fuel price cap is raised and Tory increases in taxes come...
ON MONDAY a Palestinian man carried a gas canister onto the roof of his home in occupied Jerusalem as his family faced eviction. The Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood resident threatened to blow up his home rather than let his family be forced out. Mohammed Salhiya threatened to set himself on fire if...
HOSPITALS ‘do not have the capacity to cope’ said the British Medical Association (BMA) in response to Emergency Medicine Journal findings about longer waits leading to higher risk of death. Commenting on the publication of a study in Emergency Medicine Journal showing that patients who wait more than five hours...
AS AMERICANS honoured the legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, UPS Teamsters across the country mobilised to demand the giant United Parcel Service (UPS) make MLK Day a paid holiday. They are also demanding an end to two-tier jobs, more full-time jobs, and part-time employees...
THE TORY government’s plan for a police state dictatorship over the trade unions and all public protest movements took a big hit yesterday when the House of Lords amended it out of existence, before sending ‘The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’ back to the House of Commons. It was...
THREE quarters of a million families in London will be plunged into fuel poverty after energy bills spiral by as much as 50% in April when the price cap is re-evaluated, a new report by the Resolution Foundation warns. The research shows that the number of London households in fuel...
THE MILITARY will take charge of the operations targeting refugees and asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in inflatable boats within weeks, the government confirmed yesterday. This caused outrage amongst campaigners and refugee charities, furious at the prospect of armed navy vessels and battleships taking on flimsy boats of the...
HUNDREDS of Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails have been boycotting the regime’s military courts for 16 consecutive days now, in protest against Israel’s so-called policy of administrative detention. Imprisoned under the controversial policy of ‘administrative detention,’ at least 500 Palestinian inmates have been registering their protest at their detention...
THOUSANDS of workers and young people took to the streets at the weekend in mass ‘kill the bill’ demonstrations across the country against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The Tories made it clear when the bill was first unveiled last year that its purpose is to ‘strengthen police...
MORE than 10,000 workers, students and youth marched against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill from Lincoln Inn Fields to Parliament on Saturday afternoon, chanting ‘Kill the Bill!’ There is another mass demonstration on College Green opposite Parliament from 5pm-7pm this evening as the police bill, and other reactionary...
WORKERS at Croydon Hospital are staging a protest on January 31st to demand Covid sick pay. Porters and cleaners at the south London hospital are angry after their employer – private NHS contractor G4S – stopped paying Covid-positive hospital workers’ occupational sick pay.
This means staff are forced to come into...
NATIONAL Nurses United held a National Day of Action on January 13th to demand their employers, and the Biden administration protect registered nurses (RNs), and all health care workers. Actions included a 6pm candlelight vigil in Washington, DC and a 1pm virtual press conference, featuring stories from frontline registered nurses...
THE TUC trade unions have a duty, and have the power to end the death agony of the Johnson government. Even bankers have remarked that today they have less power than lorry drivers, who if they use their power, can bring capitalism down. The trade unions must not just stand...