Monthly Archives: September 2022
LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer has called for Parliament to be recalled so MPs can abandon last week’s mini-budget ‘before any more damage is done’. The value of the pound dropped to $1.05 on Wednesday, after the Bank of England announced it would buy government debt to stabilise the economy. Downing...
THE WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions) has ‘strongly denounced’ and condemned state repression against the workers and the people of Sri Lanka. A WTFU statement of Tuesday 27 September said: ‘We strongly condemn and denounce the condemnable attempts to silence the militant mobilisations using violence and repression. ‘Among the arrested...
TORY Prime Minister Liz Truss finally emerged from Downing Street yesterday to make her first public statement on the economic crisis that has brought British capitalism to the point of bankruptcy. The crisis erupted following her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, who stunned Tory MPs and the world’s financial markets with an...
THE Bank of England (BoE) launched a huge intervention in government bond markets yesterday, as the UK financial crisis spiralled out of control following last week’s Tory mini-budget. The Bank announced that it is buying government bonds to ‘restore orderly market conditions’, adding that ‘the purchases will be carried out...
African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members barred ANC Chairman Gwede Mantashe from speaking at their 14th national congress on Monday. ‘Hamba Gwede’ (Go Gwede) and ‘asinamali’ (we have no money) were slogans chanted on Monday by delegates attending Cosatu’s conference, who believe the ANC (African National Congress) is full of empty...
THE International Monetary Fund has openly condemned the UK government over its tax cuts that handed billions to the rich, warning that the measures will fuel the cost-of-living crisis, drive up inflation and create the conditions for a worldwide capitalist collapse. In its statement, the IMF treated the UK as...
Sir Keir Starmer opened his keynote speech at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool yesterday by condemning the Truss Tory government’s mini-budget last week, saying: ‘We can’t go on like this, the government has lost control of the British economy. ‘They’ve crashed the pound, and for what? Not for you,...
LABOUR leader Keir Starmer, in his keynote speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, pledged that he is ‘not just pro-business’ but wants to be a partner with business, and invited business to ‘drive forward our modern industrial strategy’. Starmer claimed that Labour offers a ‘fresh start’ after the twelve...
THE AMERICAN National Nurses United (NNU) applauds the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) efforts to investigate the exploitative and coercive employment-related Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, otherwise known, appropriately, as TRAPs. NNU defines TRAPs as job-based financial agreements, mandated as a condition of employment, which require nurses to work minimum periods...
THE pound crashed to its lowest level ever against the dollar yesterday morning threatening that it will soon reach parity with the US currency. Sterling plummeted by almost 5% reaching a low of $1.0327 early on Monday morning after the Asian money markets opened overnight to a massive sell off...
ISRAELI settlers have once again invaded the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem in the latest act of provocation against the sacred Palestinian site. Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported that, on the eve of the Jewish holiday, scores of Israeli settlers, escorted by military forces,...
‘THEY'VE lost credibility, they’re losing confidence, they’re out of control,’ Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool as the pound crashed to parity with the US dollar yesterday. In her speech, she accused the Tory PM Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwarsi Kwarteng of behaving like ‘desperate...
THE LABOUR Party Conference in Liverpool opened yesterday with a minute’s silence, followed by leader Sir Keir Starmer leading the hall in singing God Save the King. Opening the conference, Starmer said: ‘As we enter a new era, let’s commit to honouring the late Queen’s memory.’ Delegates had been handed cards...
AN US aircraft carrier and warships from its strike group arrived in South Korea on Friday for the first time in nearly five years to participate in joint war games in a show of force at North Korea. The nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan and vessels from its strike group docked...
THE opening of the Labour Party conference took a new turn yesterday when the Labour Party leader Starmer, who has played a key part in the prosecution of the whistleblower Julian Assange and the attempt to have him extradited to the USA, led the singing of ‘God Save King...
UK CAPITALISM is in crisis. After the falls in sterling, and the rampant oil, gas and food inflation, the ruling class is desperate and determined that the working class must pay the bill for the crisis of the capitalist system. The Tory ‘mini-budget’ has made this crystal clear. Kwarteng has abolished...
IN ITS first acts of desperation, the new government of Prime Minister Liz Truss has decided to announce that the moratorium on fracking has been lifted. Fracking, hydraulic fracturing (HF), is the technique used widely in the US and Canada to extract shale gas. It involves drilling deep into the...
CHANCELLOR Kwasi Kwarteng yesterday unveiled his mini-budget that will see the working class and the poor robbed, in order to further enrich the UK ruling class, in the midst of a world economic crisis. He has abolished the 45% higher rate of income tax. There will be one single higher...
MIDWIVES in England and Wales are to be balloted on industrial action. The move was announced by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) at its annual Activists Conference in Warwick yesterday following a consultation with members in both countries. A month-long consultation saw members overwhelmingly reject their governments’ below-inflation pay award. Two-thirds...
ON the eighth anniversary of the September 21 Revolution, thousands of Yemeni people poured onto streets in the northwestern city of Sa’ada and other parts of the country to express their deep resentment over the continued acts of aggression and war crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition against the...
CHANCELLOR Kwasi Kwarteng has unveiled the plans by the Tory government to drive part-time workers back into full employment by cutting their benefits. Under the new rules Kwarteng intends to introduce next January, anyone working less than 15 hours a week will have the benefits they are entitled to under...
ISRAELI occupation forces on Tuesday and Monday night detained at least 14 Palestinians from various parts of the occupied territories, six of them from East Jerusalem. Local Palestinian sources report that the Israeli occupation forces barged into the Jerusalem neighbourhood of al-Tur and seized six Palestinians.
Israeli forces also arrested two former...
ALL WORKERS, youth and trade unionists must support the decision of Russian leader Putin to call up reservists to serve in the Ukraine, and to oversee referendums in the various Donbass Republics in Eastern Ukraine to allow them to join Russia. The US and UK brigands have a clear policy....
‘MAKE October 1st the start of a general strike,’ said All Trades Unions Alliance (ATUA) National Secretary Dave Wiltshire yesterday, after the ASLEF and RMT railway unions anounced that they would be striking on that day. The third rail union, TSSA, is expected to announce strike action on that day...
THE economies of every EU country face permanent recession according to Barclay’s Bank chief economist for the EU, Sylvia Ardagna, under the impact of the raging cost of energy following the sanctions on Russian gas and oil imports. Ardagna said that the attempts by the EU to achieve ‘independence from...
FIVE-HUNDRED dock workers employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC) at the Port of Liverpool began a two-week strike last night. Unite regional officer Steven Gerrard said: ‘Strike action will inevitably severely affect shipping and road transport as well as creating shortages in supply chains but this dispute...
FORMER chief justice of Kenya, Willy Mutunga, has attacked the British government over its ‘act of gross inhumanity and injustice’ after two Kenyan tribes filed a case against the British government at the European Court of Human Rights last month over alleged colonial abuses. The Talai and Kipsigis tribes say in the lawsuit that...
IT didn’t take long for the working class to move into action following the funeral of Elizabeth II with hundreds of dock workers at one of the UK’s largest container ports going on a two-week strike within hours of the burial. Docker members of the Unite union at the Port...
THE TORY war on the railways and railway workers is to resume immediately, with reports yesterday of mass ticket office closures being ‘hardwired’ into the new Tory Truss regime’s contracts with the rail privateers. The RMT warns that under the Tory plans almost 1,000 ticket offices are to close with...
THE Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has commended Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s refusal to accept the credentials of the Israeli regime’s new ambassador to the Latin American country. Boric, a vociferous critic of Israel, refused to receive on Thursday the credentials of new Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli because of ‘Israel’s killing...
THE TUC CONGRESS is set to meet on Tuesday October 18th, just as the Truss government is poised to take the rail trade unions by the throat. The Daily Telegraph is now patting itself on the back with the news that: ‘Ministers are forging ahead with a swathe of railway...
THE Right to Education Campaign (REC) today condemned the Israeli military raid that resulted in the detention of 10 students of Birzeit University as ‘outrageous’. REC said in a press statement that the Israeli Occupying Forces continue to target Birzeit University students as over 20 students were arrested in a...
THE MODI government’s ‘lies and myth-making’ at the National Labour Conference have been denounced by the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU). The AICCTU said on Wednesday: ‘As the Modi government prepares to implement new labour codes which undermine the rights of the working class, it is simultaneously trying to...
RUSSIA’S Energy Minister has announced that the Nord Stream 2 will be ‘replaced’ by an alternative gas pipeline to China, as a consequence of the failure of the strategic project to supply Europe with gas and oil, due to Western sanctions on Moscow over its military operation to de-Nazify...
THE borders of the Kherson region are securely protected by the Russian military, and any attempts by the Ukrainian armed forces to advance towards Kherson will be prevented, Sergey Eliseev, chairman of the regional government, said on Wednesday. ‘The situation in the Kherson Region is quite stable, the region’s borders...
THE new Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is reported to be preparing to scrap the cap on the multi-million pound bonuses bankers award themselves. Originally the cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in by European Union legislation following the 2008 international banking collapse. Trillions of pounds, dollars and euros were pumped into...
SOARING milk, cheese and egg costs have pushed food inflation to its highest level for 14 years, with millions of UK families heading into the winter in ‘food poverty’, with no prospect of prices coming down. Coupled with the soaring energy prices, the choice between eating and heating is the...
THE BIDEN administration urged railroads and unions to reach a deal to avoid a railroad work stoppage, saying on Monday it would pose ‘an unacceptable outcome’ to the US economy that could cost $2 billion a day. Railroads, including Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway’s BNSF, CSX, and Norfolk Southern, have until...
THE PCS trade union has called for the proposed staff redundancies at Clarence House to be halted and pledged to support every member of staff following the announcement, during the period of mourning for the Queen, that around 100 workers’ jobs are at risk. The union said: ‘We believe the...
DOCKERS at Britain’s two major ports – Merseyside and Felixstowe – are to strike together at the end of this month and the beginning of next, the union Unite announced yesterday. Last week, the management at the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company unilaterally ended pay talks after refusing to improve...
SPORADIC clashes between demonstrators and police took place in the Chilean capital Santiago on Sunday as the country marked the 49th anniversary of the 1973 Pinochet coup. Police fired tear gas and water cannon at angry youth who replied by throwing rocks and firecrackers, interrupting the mass demonstration on its...
THE UK’s job market, which the Tories and their supporters have long held to be evidence of the ability of British capitalism to ‘bounce back’ out of recession, is starting to turn bad according to the experts. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in the three months to July, marking...