Monthly Archives: January 2024
University and College Union (UCU) has released a report today, (Wednesday 31), which finds that around two-thirds (66 per cent) of research staff are employed on fixed-term contracts, some less than a year in length. University researchers do important work, such as helping to develop Covid vaccines, and also help...
LAST November, the Tories were confidently predicting that when their anti-strike ‘Minimum Service Levels’ law was finally passed before Christmas, around 40% of rail services would run during strikes. This law specified minimum service levels for rail and ambulance workers in England, along with border security staff in England, Wales...
ROLLING strike action and a national overtime ban by ASLEF members expands today, with train drivers employed by Northern and TransPennine Express rail privateers manning picket lines at Blackpool North, Doncaster, Glasgow, Manchester Victoria and Newcastle Central stations. Speaking on the powerful picket line outside Waterloo Station in central London...
ASLEF train drivers start another programme of rolling one-day strikes today, which will run alongside their nine-day overtime ban which began yesterday, having now not had a pay rise for nearly five years, since April 2019. Aslef members are on strike at Southeastern, Southern/Gatwick Express, GTR Thameslink, South Western Railway...
THE United States, along with other Western countries, has pitched in to accelerate Israel’s war on Palestinians through a campaign of deliberate starvation to accompany the carpet bombing of Gaza. Not content with arming the Zionist regime with all the weapons required to bomb Gaza, reducing it to rubble and...
The United Nations has urged those countries that have paused funding for its Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, to reverse their decision, warning that aid for some two million people in the besieged Gaza Strip is at stake. ‘... I strongly appeal to the governments that have suspended their contributions to, at...
Rally: 2-6pm, February 17th 2024 Starting: Hargrave Hall, Hargrave Road, Archway N19 5SP Tickets: £3 End Israel’s genocide! For a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital!
Wages & benefits must rise to match inflation!
Force the TUC to call a general strike to kick this government out!
Bring down capitalism,...
AT LEAST ten people in a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), located in the Rimal District west of Gaza City, were killed in an Israeli air strike yesterday. The building was sheltering displaced persons who had fled the fighting in other...
The decision to suspend aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency by several Western countries is a ‘collective punishment’, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said yesterday. Last Friday’s suspension by the United States of funding of UNRWA has been followed by Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Italy. The...
FIVE thousand trade unionists descended on Cheltenham on Saturday, 40 years after 14 workers were sacked at GCHQ for refusing to sign away their rights to belong to a trade union. The TUC organised a march through the town to mark the 40th anniversary and also to oppose the recently...
FIVE THOUSAND trade unionists marched on Saturday in Cheltenham to mark the banning of trade unions at the GCHQ spy centre 40 years ago, and the sacking of 14 workers for refusing to sign away their rights to belong to a trade union. Today, the trade unions are facing a...
THE North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has launched its largest military exercise since the Cold War, with a US warship leaving the United States for transit across the Atlantic to alliance territory in Europe. NATO has said some 90,000 troops from the United States and other allied nations are due...
THE UK has just been given its marching orders by the USA that it must boost the size of its armed forces in response to the ‘threats from Russia’, which amount to a realisation that imperialist backed Ukraine has lost its war with Russia, starting a panic in NATO,...
THE International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday delivered provisional measures in the high-profile case brought by South Africa against Israel, concerning allegations of genocide in the Gaza Strip. Proceedings began with Presiding Judge, Joan Donoghue, referencing the October 7 Hamas attacks inside Israel, followed by Israel’s extensive military response in...
DOZENS of civilians were killed yesterday and others sustained various injuries, in the ongoing Israeli occupation aggression against the Gaza Strip, which entered its 111th day. Medical sources reported that dozens of civilians were killed and others were injured at the Kuwait Junction on Salah al-Din Road in Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood,...
THE Guardian newspaper yesterday revealed that the Tory government is preparing to launch a consultation in the coming weeks on implementing a ‘British homes for British workers’ programme designed to bolster support for Rishi Sunak and his collapsing administration. Sunak has been left reeling from polls, including one this week...
THE Iranian foreign minister has warned that the risk of a ‘wider’ conflict in the region has sharply increased due to the United States’ all-out support for Israel amid the regime’s genocidal aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in an exclusive interview with ABC News...
Israeli forces targeted a school in Khan Younis that was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, critically injuring at least eight people yesterday. ‘We heard from paramedics and first responders that it was difficult to transfer those injured inside the school to Nasser Hospital, despite the fact it was a very...
WORLD Health Organisation Director-General has said he is ‘deeply concerned’ after Israeli forces stormed one hospital and put another under siege as they advanced deep into western Khan Younis in Gaza. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a post on social media on Monday that reports of continuous fighting in the...
THE TORY Daily Telegraph yesterday sounded the alarm bells, in the face of the ever deepening crisis of British capitalism. It was a double-barrelled message, that PM Sunak must be sacked or the Tories ‘will go extinct’. Sir Simon Clarke, who was Sunak’s number two at the Treasury, brought the...
LABOUR Party shadow health secretary Wes Streeting doubled down on his attack on the NHS yesterday with a speech to a conference organised by the Institute for Government when he blamed ‘waste’ and not Tory underfunding for the crisis in the health service. Streeting promoted his hatred of the NHS...
ISRAEL has killed at least 190 people in a time span of just 24 hours in the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip. Gaza’s Health Ministry confirmed the death toll in the city of Khan Younis on Monday. Israel targeted a house adjacent to Nasser Hospital, and video footage showed...
MORE than half a million people are starving in Gaza, the United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA), World Food Programme (WFP) and Gaza’s Hamas government reported yesterday, calling for the UN to declare the besieged Strip a famine region. On the 109th day of the Israeli Zionist genocidal aggression...
Last Friday, Tata Steel UK confirmed its devastating plans to axe 2,800 jobs with the closure of two blast furnaces at its Port Talbot plant in South Wales. Tata claims it was losing £1.5 million a day in the UK. Tata Steel UK, owned by the Indian-based Tata brothers, has been...
HUNDREDS of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters staged rallies across Spain demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, urging the government to break institutional ties and end arms trade with Israel. Spaniards on Saturday staged anti-Israel rallies in more than 90 municipalities throughout Spain, with the largest one in the capital Madrid,...
PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said yesterday that the international consensus on establishing the State of Palestine must be translated into practical steps that embody the state on the ground toward ending the occupation. He said that the world must begin thinking about imposing sanctions on Israel for its continued...
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak has begged Tory PM Sunak to stop Tata carrying out last Friday’s threat to sack 2,800 steelworkers in Port Talbot, Wales. Nowak said: ‘Steel unions have been pressing the government to develop a serious plan for UK steel for years. ‘The Prime Minister can’t stand by...
AT LEAST 25,105 people have now been killed and 62,681 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that as the US/UK-backed Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip entered its 107th day yesterday 178 Palestinians had been killed and 293 injured in the past...
FAR RIGHT Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has reiterated his call for ‘encouraging’ Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, saying the regime’s occupation of the besieged enclave is the only way to restore security to Israel. Ben-Gvir made the remarks during an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 news on Wednesday, weeks...
EVEN US intelligence agencies estimate that the death toll among Hamas fighters from Israel’s ongoing attempt to crush the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip falls short of the Netanyahu regime’s goal of eliminating the Palestinian resistance group. In a classified report, the spy agencies highlighted Hamas’ resilience over the...
‘CIVILIANS IN THE WEST must prepare for all-out war with Russia within the next 20 years’, a NATO Admiral, Rob Bauer warned in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. It’s not just the armed forces that have got to be got ready for the Third World War. Bauer says ‘private citizens need...
Clashes have subsided in Sudan as East African leaders gear up for a summit in Uganda on January 18th, aiming to address the crisis in Sudan. The Sudan Armed Forces and their adversaries, the Rapid Support Forces, are in a period of reinforcing their positions, getting ready for possible future...
TWENTY thousand university and school students, primary and secondary school teachers and universities staff marched through Athens last Thursday in a determined and enthusiastic mood to defeat the Greek right-wing government plans for private universities for profit and thus deliver a blow to free state education. Students in the march...
ISRAELI occupation forces yesterday prevented Red Crescent ambulances and their medical teams from entering the Tulkarm camp and reaching the casualties. The Red Crescent told a WAFA correspondent that it had received several calls from citizens inside the camp about injuries caused by occupation bullets in the camp’s neighbourhoods, some...
ON Wednesday, the FTSE 100 had its biggest fall since August last year with almost 30 billion pounds wiped off the value of the 100 leading corporations and businesses listed on the London Stock Exchange. This dramatic plunge in value was attributed to the surprise shock to the investors and...
GERMANY’S government is considering the delivery of tank ammunition to Israel amid its genocidal war against Gaza, the German magazine Der Spiegel has reported, as Western governments keep on backing the Tel Aviv regime for its ongoing massacre. Israel requested Germany in November to approve the delivery of around 10,000...
STRIKING Capital City College Group (CCCG) lecturers rallied outside the CEO’s office in Victoria yesterday on the second day of their eight-day strike. The strikers chanted: ‘What do we want, fair pay, what do we want, less hours, when do we want it, now.’ CCCG is the biggest college group in...
The medical journal, the Lancet, has released two papers called Lancet Child & Adolescent Health in which it shows that paediatric care for non-white children is worse than white children across the USA. The series finds that policy reform is urgently needed to address disparities. The papers state that: ‘A review...
BRITISH oil giant Shell has halted its Red Sea shipments after US-UK strikes in the Yemen against the Houthis. The UK-based energy giant Shell has suspended all shipments through the Red Sea indefinitely, amid heightened tensions over Washington’s unrelenting support for the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged...
THE WORLD Economic Forum (WEF) opened its meeting at the Swiss resort of Davos this week under the storm clouds of an economic and political crisis that is engulfing world capitalism. It wasn’t meant to be this dire, as the global leaders, the corporation bosses and world bankers had assured...
The secretary-general of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah says Israel has suffered ‘unprecedented’ losses at the hands of Palestinian resistance and has failed to achieve any of its goals after 100 days of its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised speech on...
UCU UNION lecturers at the CONEL (College of North East London) and City and Islington College, Blackstock Road, started eight days of strike action yesterday. They are fighting for a pay increase to match inflation and a reduction of their heavy workload.
CONEL UCU Chair Chris Anglin said: ‘This college refuses...
As the US-backed Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip entered day 100 on Sunday, massive aerial and artillery strikes continued to pound neighbourhoods and homes and massacre more civilians, mostly children and women. The Israeli occupation army continued to attack different areas of Gaza, killing and injuring a number...
On the day that Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak addressed parliament – to justify bombing Yemen last Friday without bothering to consult MPs – his defence secretary Grant Shapps announced that the UK would be sending 20,000 troops to eastern Europe. Shapps pledged these troops to join a major NATO...
ON the day that Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak addressed parliament – to justify bombing Yemen last Friday without bothering to consult MPs – his defence secretary Grant Shapps announced that the UK would be sending 20,000 troops to eastern Europe. Shapps pledged these troops to join a major NATO...