Tag: local government

YESTERDAY, Prime Minister Blair made a written statement to the House of Commons announcing that the Home Office is to be split in two. There...

Approximately 20,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) working for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Identity and Passports Service (IPS)...

THE proposed site of a new City Academy, next to the new Wembley Stadium, is being occupied to stop the privatisation project from going...

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams yesterday agreed a May 8th date for the return of devolved local government in the north of Ireland, after...

THE Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas and the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice held a joint press conference in Ramallah last Sunday in the...

‘THE idea that acute district general hospitals ( DGHs) can be run safely without acute surgical cover, a proper intensive care unit (ITU) and...

A HAMAS leader Khalil Abu-Layla said on Saturday that the Palestinians are not pinning any hopes on a visit by US Secretary of State...

INFLATION in the UK is accelerating out of control. According to the latest Labour government figures which grossly underestimate the process the Consumer...

LAWYERS have vowed to fight government plans that they warn will destroy the legal aid system. Hundreds of lawyers staged a mass lobby outside...

COUNCIL worker unions angrily rejected a 2 per cent wage cut pay offer yesterday, as inflation hit 4.6 per cent, the highest in 16...

‘I welcome you all on this great day’, said Ismail Haniya last Saturday, just before he was sworn in as Prime Minister of the...

Over 12,000 junior doctors and supporters, including medical students, registrars and a number of consultants, marched through central London last Saturday against government ‘reforms’...

AROUND 15,000 junior doctors are about to find themselves without training posts if Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and the new Medical Training Application Service...

THE US military has reported the deaths of three more troops, two in blasts and one hit by small arms fire in insurgent...

ON MONDAY trading on the Wall Street stock market in New Century Financial shares was halted, as the second largest US sub-prime mortgage lender...

THE TENS of billions of pounds the government intends to spend on new weapons of mass destruction should be spent on public services, said...

THE Islamic Jihad Movement last Monday called for isolating the Israeli occupation government and trying its leaders for ‘crimes against humanity,’ especially by pursuing...

THE Azeri newspaper Zarkalo has been discussing what role Azerbaijan should take if the US launches an attack on Iran. Its conclusion is that...

Welfare ‘reform’ plans aimed at privatising ‘help’ for the long term unemployed drew an angry response from civil servants’ union PCS yesterday. Union leader Mark Serwotka...

THE working class is rising up to defend the Welfare State. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of workers and members of the public took...

‘WE are going to fight to keep our hospitals, even if it means occupying them to keep them open,’ shouted demonstrators fighting plans to...

‘THE mass picket has gone very well,’ said Bill Rogers, secretary of the North East London Council of Action, outside the North Middlesex Hospital...

IMPOSSIBLE fees estimated at £1,500 a year will be imposed in September, if the government is allowed to go ahead with planned cuts in...

The National Union of Teachers says the involvement of private sector companies in education over recent years ‘is of grave concern’. It stresses that the...

HAMAS leader Khaled Mishaal held a news conference in Cairo last Friday. He began by saying: ‘We are now in Cairo on the first leg...

‘THIS is a tremendous demonstration of the anger of the British people against what Blair has done in Iraq and is threatening to do...

OVER 100,000 people marched in London and many thousands more marched in Glasgow on Saturday, to demand the immediate withdrawal of all British troops...

THE real content of the ‘war against terror’ (a tool for promoting imperialist interests and for grabbing the world’s resources) has been proven with...

‘The trade union and Labour movement must rise up and oppose Blair’s proposal to ensure Britain becomes the aircraft carrier for Bush’s nuclear ambitions,’...

International aid agency Oxfam said on Wednesday that conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are close to melt-down. It called on members of the EU,...

RUTH Kelly, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has backed proposals to end the long-term secure tenancies of working-class families living in...

‘PRIVATE companies are raking in millions of pounds, leaving a black hole in NHS finances,’ UNISON – Britain’s largest health workers’ union – has...

A REPORT into the expenditure of the National Health Service on drugs, published by the government’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) yesterday, reveals that...

‘The government is allowing multinationals to bleed the NHS dry,’ public sector union UNISON general secretary, Dave Prentis, said yesterday. Private companies are raking in...

AHEAD of next Monday’s summit in Jerusalem, President George Bush’s administration is setting out to wreck the agreement reached in Mecca on February 8...

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) yesterday announced a week of action against the closure of Post Offices. The week of campaigning by the ‘Future for...

THE Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars has issued a statement on the US’ Baghdad security plan. It said that under the plan: ‘First, most...

Hamas Political Bureau chief Khaled Mishaal in an extensive interview last Tuesday reflected on the Mecca agreement between the Hamas and Fatah movements. Mishaal said:...

MORE than 15,000 students marched through Athens last Thursday demanding the withdrawal of the proposed revision of Article 16 of the Constitution, which would...

MORE than 400 Chagos Islanders and their supporters marched through Crawley town centre on Saturday, shouting: ‘We will return to Diego Garcia – it’s...

Chagos Islanders are at the High Court in London today, where the British government is making a second appeal against the ruling that they...

Over 2,000 workers and youth last Saturday marched through Leyton and Walthamstow, north east London, against the closure of Whipps Cross Hospital. The march was...

PRIME Minister Blair has been secretly questioned, for a second time, by police investigating allegations that honours were sold for cash by his government....

STRIKING PCS members in Harrow, north-west London, staged pickets at the Land Registry, the local Jobcentre, Harrow Magistrates and Harrow Crown Court from early...

‘Paramedics don’t have referral skills. ‘Andy Burnham is not redefining the health service and Patricia Hewitt got her facts wrong last year when she...