Monthly Archives: June 2023
ANTI-PENSION reform protesters in France stormed the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics in a posh north Paris neighbourhood last Tuesday, leading to pitched battles with police. While the police managed to evict them from the building with brutal force, it gave rise to fears that athletes and fans might...
Police will have ‘near total discretion’ to ban protests, according to leading human rights lawyer Adam Wagner. ‘Secondary legislation’ introduced by the Tories in parliament this week gives the police ‘near total discretion’ over which protests will be banned, along with the absolute power to impose ‘conditions’ on any demonstration...
THE TORY Party civil war was ratcheted up yesterday as PM Rishi Sunak accused his predecessor Boris Johnson of asking him to overrule a parliamentary panel vetting his resignation honours list, saying it was something ‘I wasn’t prepared to do’. Johnson responded by accusing Sunak of ‘talking rubbish’. Speaking at ‘a...
MORE than 60,000 junior doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are going on strike for three days this week against massive 31.7% pay cuts. BMA Junior Doctors Committee Chair Dr Rob Laurenson appeared on Sky News yesterday morning, ahead of his members’ 72-hour strike from 7am on Wednesday...
A comprehensive study conducted by Ben Tippet and Rafael Wildauer from the University of Greenwich has utilised data from The ‘Sunday Times Rich List’ (STRL) – a yearly publication(1989-2023) to uncover six critical findings that demonstrate an unsettling growth in wealth inequality. The latest 2023 STRL paints a clear picture of...
FORMER Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned the Conservatives against any attempt to block Boris Johnson if he seeks to stand in another parliamentary constituency. Rees-Mogg told the Mail on Sunday that to do so could plunge the party ‘into civil war’. Johnson resigned as the MP for Uxbridge and South...
SOME 23 people have been injured as a result of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam collapsing and the flooding of the Kherson Region, medical services told TASS on Thursday. ‘According to the latest data, 23 people have been injured, they have hypothermia and traumas, 21 individuals have been hospitalised,’...
JULIAN ASSANGE, who has lost his latest legal appeal, is ‘dangerously close’ to being extradited to the US, his family and observers of his long-running legal challenge say. His lawyers are to appeal again to the same court, amid growing fears he could spend the rest of his life in...
THE NEU (National Education Union) has written to the Secretary of State for Education ahead of its National Executive meeting on the 17 June. ‘We are repeating the call from ASCL, NAHT, NASUWT and the NEU for the leaked STRB report to be published and for negotiations on the dispute...
AMAZON was yesterday accused of ‘dirty tricks’ as the GMB withdrew its recognition bid. Amazon refuses to pay workers a decent wage, but are paying an additional 1,300 workers to try and bust the union, says the GMB. GMB has accused Amazon of ‘dirty tricks’ after the union was forced to...
‘THE implications for children’s life chances can’t be allowed to continue,’ said the National Education Union (NEU) on Wednesday, commenting on the Public Accounts Committee report warning of a ‘lost generation in education’. Kevin Courtney, NEU Joint General Secretary, said: ‘This new report spells out the worrying trends that schools...
THE economic and political crisis gripping capitalism is causing despair and despondency amongst the bourgeoisie and its media representatives at the highest levels. This week, Tory PM Rishi Sunak jetted off to Washington for a ‘summit’ with President Biden that consisted solely of Sunak pleading for US support in making...
HOSPITAL consultants in England will go on strike on 20th and 21st July if their ballot, which closes at the end of June, is successful and the government continues to refuse to come forward with a credible pay offer. The BMA is currently balloting its consultant members in England for...
‘It’s unacceptable that there are now over 170,000 people stuck in limbo as they wait for a decision on their asylum claims – with three quarters of them waiting for longer than six months, said Enver Solomon, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Refugee Council last Friday. He was responding...
PALESTINIAN prisoners held under Israel's so-called administrative detention policy are defiantly planning a mass open-ended hunger strike in protest at their unlawful and indefinite imprisonment without trial or charge. The mass protest action is to start next Sunday, June 18, according to the Palestinian Administrative Detainees’ Committee. Palestinian inmates will also...
A WAVE of corporate defaults is imminent throughout the US and Europe, analysts at the German Deutsche Bank warn in its annual study released today. It points to the steady increase in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England as colliding...
FIVE-HUNDRED St Mungo’s homelessness charity workers – now into the second week of their month-long strike – are going from strength to strength in their fight for a living wage. Today they are holding a midday rally outside Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall in London. On Monday, over 100 strikers and...
A MOTION committing the GMB union to fight for criminal charges to be brought against those responsible for the Grenfell Tower Fire was passed unanimously at its Congress in Brighton yesterday. Motion 192 ‘Grenfell Fire Disaster must give rise to serious changes to restore public trust in regulation to prevent...
THE UNION representing 28,000 Canadian actors and radio artists reports that 28,000 commercial workers have been locked out from commercial acting work for over a year. The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has been looking to renew their agreement with the Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA)...
On Saturday, president Joe Biden rushed to sign off the deal reached with the Republican Party to suspend the $31.4 trillion US debt ceiling until January 2025. Failure to suspend the ceiling would have meant the US being unable to increase its massive debt, leading it to end Federal spending...
OVER 100 striking St Mungo’s workers and other trade unionists lobbied City Hall yesterday lunchtime demanding better pay and conditions. There will be a further mass rally at the St Mungo’s HQ in St Thomas More St Tower Hill at 12 noon today, with further rallies and other actions every...
OVER 2,000 security guards at Heathrow Airport are holding a further 33 days of strike action throughout the summer. The 33 days of strike action begin on Saturday, June 17, and carry on into the August Bank Holiday. This escalation of the action follows several days of strike action by 1,400...
The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has introduced two bills that would bring Palestinian schools colleges and universities and their staff in the 1948-occupied territories under stricter scrutiny from the regime’s so-called security and intelligence apparatus. One of the bills, proposed last Wednesday, would require the Israeli education ministry to conduct background security...
THE Belgorod governor has said shelling and strikes by imperialist supported Ukrainian forces continued on Saturday night after two residents were killed and thousands of Russians, including many children, were displaced. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram channel that more than 4,000 people were relocated to temporary accommodation in the...
THE government on Thursday defied the 4pm deadline for handing over Johnson’s unredacted messages and notebooks to the Covid inquiry. It now faces legal action over the issue, that could bring it down! The Covid inquiry is demanding to see all the various messages between the then PM, Boris Johnson...
FOREIGN ministers of the US-led NATO military alliance have met to discuss offering future security guarantees to Ukraine amid Kiev’s push to join the increasingly hawkish bloc. The ministers of NATO’s 31 member countries discussed the issue in the Norwegian capital of Oslo for a second and final day of...
STRIKING RMT railway workers were boosted by the leader of the US Amazon Labour Union joining their picket line at Euston Station yesterday morning. ALU president Chris Smalls told News Line: ‘As a trade unionist, I bring solidarity to the rail strike from New York Amazon workers. ‘We are fighting for...
THE government yesterday defied the 4pm deadline for handing over unredacted messages and notebooks to the Covid inquiry. It now faces legal action over the issue. The inquiry is demanding to see all the various messages between Boris Johnson and his advisers during the pandemic, as well as his diaries...
THE political crisis tearing the Tory government apart has assumed epic proportions over the release of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and private notebooks to the independent public inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic. The public inquiry, headed by Baroness Hallett, was set up in 2021 to inquire...
TENS of thousands of teachers and their supporters rallied in Paris and towns across France on Wednesday to show their opposition to the Macron government’s ‘Schools Pact’ and to demand the repeal of the pensions law in France. In a joint press release issued on 19 May, education unions, the...
UNITE hit out yesterday at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement that he would halt new gas and oil production in the North Sea and demanded instead ‘public ownership and democratic control of the energy industry’. ‘Labour needs a properly funded plan for the North Sea and North Sea workers...
Workers at the homelessness charity St Mungo’s began four weeks of strike action on Tuesday May 30, fighting to win a backdated pay rise of 10%. There is a rally of St Mungo’s workers at Hackney Town in east London at lunchtime today, at Westminster tomorrow and outside the London...
THE UK government has defended the ‘right’ of the Ukrainian regime to attack Russia and to target the Russian capital Moscow, after a drone attack on the Russian capital on Tuesday night. James Cleverly, the UK Foreign Secretary, speaking in Estonia where he was posing with a machine gun, said...