Monthly Archives: August 2023
ENGLISH College principals increased their pay by four times the rate recommended by the sector’s employer body, the University and College Union (UCU) has revealed today. New financial analysis by the union shows that 26 principals received pay rises of over 10% in 2021/22 and one principal’s total package rose...
THE Independent Municipal & Allied Trade Union (IMATU) has reacted angrily after it was informed that its striking members in local government in Tshwane who have been taking part in a six-week long strike will have their pay cut by council management. It comes after Tshwane councillors decided that strikers...
LIBYA’S PM has ‘suspended’ his foreign minister Najla al-Mangoush after she met with her Israeli counterpart, in secret, despite the fact that Libya is a strong backer of the Palestinian cause, and does not recognise Israel, a policy that has 100% support in Libya. Knowledge of the meeting has already...
HUMAN Rights Watch has called for an end to impunity for Israeli killings of Palestinian children, and the use of unlawful lethal force. The Israeli military and border police forces are killing Palestinian children with virtually no recourse for accountability, the human rights watchdog said yesterday.
Last year, 2022, was the...
TORY Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced another government ‘initiative’ this week, this time ordering the police to ‘crackdown on crime’. The very idea that the police are somehow not cracking down enough will come as a shock to all those who have been on the receiving end of police brutality. Yesterday,...
THE homelessness charity Crisis said yesterday that what was already an emergency now risks becoming ‘a growing catastrophe’. Chief executive Matt Downie said: ‘The Scottish government must push on with plans to prevent homelessness, so people can get help earlier and so public services can help stop people being forced...
TRADE union rights are facing escalating challenges throughout Europe, warns the European Public Service Union (EPSU). In France, a number of trade union activists are currently being called to interviews with police, EPSU says. These summonses are directly linked to their participation in actions such as demonstrations, strikes, and other...
Following the passing of the Strikes (Minimum Service Level) Act in July, the Tories on Friday launched a six week ‘consultation on the reasonable steps trade unions should take when implementing minimum service levels during strikes.’ In the press release accompanying this announcement, the Tories proclaimed: ‘Consultation will produce a...
PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said yesterday that the world should take a clear stand and do what is necessary to stop Israel’s crimes of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah, Shtayyeh said that the apartheid regime in Israel...
Amazon has been taken to court in New York state after it was accused of violating federal law multiple times to obstruct unionisation efforts at a warehouse near Albany in the last year. The new complaint was filed by a regional director at the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB).
The complaint...
WITH the Tory Party split and divided, Labour is now revealing its own pro-Tory proposals to make the working class pay for the continuing and deepening worldwide crisis of the capitalist system. Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, while supporting all of the new Tory anti union laws, is now insisting on...
CONSULTANTS in England ended two days of strike action at 7am today. In the absence of any progress in discussions with the government, they will now also strike on 2nd, 3rd and 4th October – the longest period of action by consultants so far, the British Medical Association (BMA) warns. The...
YESTERDAY evening, former US president Donald Trump, accompanied by a US Secret Service Motorcade, swept up to Fulton county jail and handed himself in over racketeering and conspiracy charges after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in the state of Georgia. Far from any shamefaced contrition over his...
THE BRICS group is seeking to expand and now has Iran in its sights along with five other countries. Iran has been invited to become a member of the BRICS group of emerging economies, whose leaders are in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss the bloc’s expansion.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa...
STRIKING consultants were out in force on the BMA picket line at University College Hospital, Euston, central London yesterday morning on the first of two days of strike action over pay. The BMA said: ‘Consultants have seen their take home pay fall by more than a third since 2008/09, and...
AN Embraer-135 private jet crashed in the Tver Region north of Moscow on Wednesday. All 10 people on board were killed, according to preliminary data. Businessman and mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, was on the plane. He had been used by Putin to fight the war in the Ukraine, but recently...
THE United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) is gearing up for strike action at the ‘Big Three’ US automakers General Motors, Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) and Ford Motor Company. UAW released a video on Monday, August 21, profiling fourth generation Ford worker Sara Schambers.
The video was released...
CONSULTANTS in England are holding two more days of strike action today and tomorrow, demonstrating their commitment to fix consultants’ pay in order to retain the NHS’s most experienced clinicians. The strikes started at 7am today and end at 7am on Saturday, with two more days of strike action planned...
JOHANNESBURG – A summit of the leaders of BRICS nations, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, with the bloc’s expansion being on the top of its agenda, was hosted in Johanesburg. In an address ahead of the August 22 to 24 summit, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed...
NHS CONSULTANTS in England today begin two more days of industrial action, and have announced further strike dates in October, demonstrating their commitment to ensuring the Government acts to ‘fix consultant pay’ in order to retain the NHS’s most experienced clinicians. This week’s strikes start at 7am today and end...
THE lead consultant on the neonatal unit where Lucy Letby worked said yesterday that hospital managers should be regulated in a similar way to doctors and nurses. Dr Stephen Brearey condemned the fact that there is ‘no apparent accountability’ for what NHS managers do in trusts. Dr Brearey said senior staff...
THE FAMILY of a black man murdered in 1959 is demanding access to the police file on his unsolved killing, said the radio documentary, The Murder of Kelso Cochrane, on BBC Radio 4 Monday night. It is being repeated at 11:00 BST today, 23 August. Kelso Cochrane was stabbed to death...
THE aftermath of the sentencing on Monday of Lucy Letby for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital has thrown a searchlight once again on the role of privatising NHS managers, amidst the correct accusations that they ignored...
TORY Prime Minister Rishi Sunak yesterday dodged the question as to whether the inquiry he announced into baby deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital will be judge-led, with power to compel witnesses to attend, answer questions and produce documents. Sunak was asked on BBC TV: ‘On the inquiry, should...
Hundreds of actors, writers and entertainment workers gathered by the statue of Wolfe Tone at St Stephen’s Green in Dublin on Saturday, to demonstrate in support of their striking peers in the United States. US film and TV production has halted in recent months as a result of widespread industrial...
THE FICTION of a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for British capitalism is now firmly rejected by even the most loyal of Tory newspapers, the Telegraph, with the admission that recession is inevitable and indeed should be welcomed. This position was forcibly expressed in an article at the...
RAILWAY workers will take the fight for the future of ticket offices to the doorstep of 10 Downing Street on Thursday 31 August – see advert this page. The mass rally will see RMT members, trades unionists and supporters from across the country tell the government in no uncertain terms...
THE BMA issued a powerful statement yesterday calling for ‘non-clinical managers in the NHS and other health service providers to be regulated, in line with the manner in which clinical staff are by professional bodies’. Responding to the guilty verdict in the Lucy Letby trial, Professor Phil Banfield, BMA Chair...
VIOLENCE is threatening Al Nao hospital, a vital lifeline for people in Omdurman, to the north west of Khartoum, as the conflict in Sudan enters its fifth month, causing immense suffering for people in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Fighting in Omdurman has been...
TENS of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated across the occupied territories for the 33rd straight week against the policies of Israel’s right wing extremist cabinet that includes fascists, and which wants to abolish the judiciary. The Israeli protests have been a fixed weekly event since January, when Netanyahu announced the...
TRAIN drivers at more than a dozen companies will strike on Friday, 1 September and refuse to work overtime on Saturday, 2 September, their union Aslef said yesterday. It marks the latest industrial action in Aslef's long-running pay dispute. The strike will force companies to cancel all services in the country,...
A MOSCOW magistrates court has fined US tech giant Google 3 million roubles ($31,800) for its failure to delete questionable information about the special military operation in Ukraine, as well as information banned in Russia, a TASS correspondent reported from the court on Thursday. ‘The court hereby rules to find...
WORLD capitalism and in particular British capitalism is in its greatest crisis ever with sections of the Tory party compeletely demoralised by the ‘Oceans of Debt’ that they have created, and the refusal of the working class to pay the bill for it. The Tory party is drowning in this...
HUNDREDS of Palestinians being held inside detention facilities across the occupied territories have launched an indefinite hunger strike to protest at mistreatment by prison service forces and violent raids on their cells. The director of the Palestinian Prisoners Press Office, Ahmed al-Kudra, said in a statement on Thursday that nearly...
A GROUP of cross-party MPs and Peers have sent a letter to Claire Coutinho, Minister for Children Families and Wellbeing, expressing their concern about the worrying prevalence of secure transportation providers restraining and handcuffing vulnerable children unnecessarily. They have also called for a meeting with the Hope Instead of Handcuffs...
THE following article by Wafa Aludaini appeared on the Hamas website ‘Palestinian Information Centre’. She is a Gaza-based journalist and activist, reporting on how Palestinians live under the Israeli occupation: 'IN THE intensive care room in the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR) lies four-year-old Jibreel Sawarka.
The Palestinian toddler is...
THE euphoria over figures released this week that the UK inflation rate in July had dropped to 6.8%, meaning that prices were shooting up at a slightly slower rate than in June, has quickly disappeared despite all attempts by the Tories to talk it up as a ‘light at...
‘DESPITE Tory claims that the cost-of-living crisis is coming to an end, the truth is that inflation (RPI) is still outstripping wage growth,’ Unite said yesterday. The ONS (Office for National Statistics) reported that inflation fell to 6.8% in the year to July, down from 7.9% in June. Unite responded: ‘As...
SIX white Mississippi police officers have pleaded guilty to state charges for torturing two black men in a racist assault in the United States. All six had also recently admitted their guilt in a connected federal civil rights case. They appeared in a Rankin County courtroom in Brandon, Mississippi, on...
INFLATION figures yesterday, that recorded a drop in the inflation rate to 6.8% in July, have been greeted by the Tories and the Bank of England as proof that their policy of driving up interest rates to impoverish workers and drive up unemployment is starting to have an effect. Tory...
SYRIA’S Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Firas Kaddour, discussed on Sunday with the Algerian Ambassador to Damascus, Kamel Bouchama, ways to bolster cooperation and relations between Syria and Algeria in the fields of oil, gas and mineral resources. Both sides have exchanged views on minutes of meetings signed in...
THE GERMAN economic recession has deepened, with the number of corporate insolvencies in the country sharply increasing in July. Almost a quarter more companies filed for insolvency than in the same month last year, according to the latest figures from the Federal Statistics Office. This included a sharp increase in the...
AS THE junior doctors ended their latest four-day strike at 7.00am yesterday morning, Tory Health Minister Will Quince kicked out at them and NHS consultants, touring the TV and radio studios to say ‘there will be no more talks about pay.’ Quince said: ‘My door remains open to discuss other...
HUNDREDS of National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) members began a strike at the Ekapa diamond mines on August 7th; then on August 10, police forces arrested 43 of the striking workers after attacking the picket line with water cannons and tear gas. Almost 700 workers employed at...