National News
Government ducking child poverty commitment
THE CON-DEM Coalition government has failed to meet a legal commitment to produce a strategy document by 25th March on how it intends to tackle child poverty.
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Army on standby to scab
GOVERNMENT ministers last week prepared for the likelihood of prison officers walking out, as they learned that contracts to run three jails had just been handed to the private sector, by putting army personnel on standby to replace the officers.
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A British Tea Party?
RIGHT-WING Tories are planning a response to the giant TUC March for the Alternative by staging pro-cuts demonstrations.
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Unions see through pensions Green Paper
UNIONS reacted cynically to the Government’s proposals for a major overhaul of the state pension, setting it at a fixed rate of £150 a week for a single pensioner and doing away with pension credit top-ups for those with little or no other income — and presumably a host of other linked benefits that come with those top-ups.
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Unite calls for end to Nato intervention in Libya
THE GIANT union Unite last Monday called upon the governments of Britain, France and the US to halt the air attacks on Libya.
Unite says that the intervention is a mistake and will provoke a lengthened civil conflict. An immediate ceasefire ought to be called to allow for resolution through peaceful means, the union argues.
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Blackburn rejects the EDL
THE PEOPLE of Blackburn are facing a bill of over £1 million for the policing of a demonstration by 2,000 members of the English Defence League last Saturday, in addition to disruption to trade and other normal activities in the town centre.
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Evict rogue landlords!
THE HOUSING charity Shelter is running an on-line petition calling for curbs on rogue landlords after receiving a 23 per cent increase in complaints about landlords in the last year.
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Left Unity meeting in Colchester
by New Worker correspondent
MEMBERS of New Worker Supporters’ Groups, Morning Star readers and members of the Labour Representation Committee held a joint Left Unity meeting last weekend in Colchester.
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Long hours can kill
WORKING more than 11 hours a day significantly increases a worker’s risk of heart disease, according to research published last week by a team from University College, London.
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Government needs family debt to rise
THE GOVERNMENT is afraid it’s economic plans for private sector expansion are going to fail after figures released last week show that families in Britain are paying off debts, including mortgages, and are growing more reluctant to take on more debt.
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Jobcentre staff urged to trick claimants
A WHISTLEBLOWER employed at a jobcentre last week revealed to the Guardian newspaper that management there is putting pressure on staff remove claimants by tricking them into breaching the rules in order to reach cost-cutting targets.
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London call to end the war
by New Worker correspondent
SOME 200 people called for an end to the imperialist aggression against Libya at meeting in the heart of London called by the Stop the War Coalition. In the historic Conway Hall a galaxy of speakers from the peace and labour movement addressed the meeting, including veteran statesman Tony Benn, CND general secretary Kate Hudson, Sami Ramadan of Iraqi Democrats, Andrew Murray and Lindsay German from the Stop the War Coalition, left Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and campaigning former MP George Galloway.
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Viva Venezuela!
AN IMPORTANT gathering of progressives from the labour movement and beyond will come together in London on 16th April to discuss how we can learn from and further build support for Venezuela, a country at the forefront of the struggle for peace, justice and socialism in the 21st century, writes Richard Irons.
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International News
Nuclear pollution soars off Japanese coast
Radio Havana Cuba
THE TOKYO Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said on Tuesday that it had detected radioactive seawater in the Pacific Ocean with a concentration of radioactive iodine many million times the legal limit.
The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi (Number One) nuclear power plant said that samples taken from seawater near one of the reactors contained 7.5 million times the legal limit for radioactive iodine on 2nd April.
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Israel-Palestinian peace talks: an uncertain future
Radio Havana Cuba
WHILE Israeli President Shimon Peres is visiting the United States to discuss, among other issues, the stalled Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, the Zionist authorities approved the construction of 900 new homes in the neighbourhood of Gilo, in the city of Jerusalem.
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Russia to rescue Serbia from Nato’s claws?
by Sergei Balmasov
SERBIA could become one of the largest buyers of Russian arms following Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to the country and Russian agreement to provide Belgrade with a billion-dollar loan. Three billion dollars will be spent to modernise Serbia’s outdated Soviet arms and purchase state-of-the-art Russian weapons.
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Killers waging a war on peace — McGuinness
IAIS
NORTHERN Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has said those responsible for murdering Constable Ronan Kerr are the enemies of the people of Ireland.
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Features
Gorbachev honoured far away from the land he destroyed
Pravda.ru
INTERNATIONALLY famous music and movie stars, political personas and public figures congratulated the former president of the USSR, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev on his 80th anniversary last week. Strangely enough, the celebration did not take place in Gorbachev’s motherland. The pompous party took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
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How capitalism made Japan’s disaster worse
by Gavrielle Gemma
THE HEARTS of workers and the oppressed of the world go out to the Japanese people who have been hit by an earthquake and tsunami and are now threatened with nuclear disaster. We can never forget that more than 200,000 people, almost all civilians, were murdered by US nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, while millions suffered from radiation poisoning, cancer and birth defects in the following decades.
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Nato and Al Qaeda: Sleeping with the Enemy?
Radio Havana Cuba
THE THOUGHTLESS and capricious behaviour of the capitalist powers requires them to accept dangerous paradoxes on many occasions, which call into question not only their own ideas and conceptions of the world but even their own safety and that of their citizens.
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