National News
Armed police at NHS protest
by New Worker correspondent
DOZENS of protests took place all around the country last weekend against the Con-Dem Coalition’s flagship Health and Social Care Bill. But the one in Whitehall last Saturday, close to Richmond House, the headquarters of the NHS, attracted the attention of the Metropolitan Police’s notorious Territorial Support Group (TSG).
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Unions condemn regional pay
PUBLIC sector trade unions reacted angrily last week after Chancellor George Osborne advanced plans to enable some Government departments to introduce local levels of pay so that workers in regions outside London and the South East could be paid less.
It comes after a series of attacks on public sector jobs, pay and pensions.
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Don’t privatise the roads — look what happened to the railways!
THE CIVIL service union PCS last week attacked a Government announcement of plans to privatise the construction and management of roads in Britain.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “Should anyone be in any doubt about what this privatisation would be like, they should look no further than what has happened to our rail services since they were sold off by a previous Tory government.
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Students Day of Action
UNIVERSITY students last week staged a successful Day of Action, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and the National Union of Students to protest at Government plans for higher education.
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Over 10,000 sick and disabled left without benefits
THE DEPARTMENT of Work and DWP figures released last month show that there were 10,130 benefit sanctions applied to claimants of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) last year.
To place this figure in context, that is almost 50 times as many sanctions handed out to sick and disabled people as were applied to the young people’s Work Experience scheme which recently hit the headlines.
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Minimum wage cut by inflation
FROM 1st October 2012 the adult minimum wage rate is set to increase from £6.08 to £6.19-an-hour; the Youth Development Rate stays the same at £4.98-an-hour as does the rate for 16-17 Year Old Rate at £3.68 an hour. The Apprentice Rate increases from £2.60 to £2.65-an-hour. This is well below the inflation rate and an effective pay cut for hundreds of thousands of workers already struggling on very low wages.
Unions have roundly condemned the miserliness of the rise and especially the freezing of the rate for workers under 21.
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Labour fails to halt NHS Bill
A LAST-DITCH attempt by Labour to delay voting on the Con-Dem Coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill until the risk assessment report had been published and read by MPs failed.
The Bill was passed by 82 votes, with the Tories and Liberal Democrats supporting it.
The House of Lords approved the Bill on Monday and the Commons gave its final approval on Tuesday.
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Photojournalists fight police demands
THE LONDON Photographers’ branch of the National Union of Journalists has been fighting demands from police to hand over pictures of the events at the Dale Farm eviction last October of travellers from their own land.
The union objects to these measures that will lead to journalists being seen as an arm of the police force rather than neutral reporters of events.
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Free Bradley Manning now!
by New Worker correspondent
DEMONSTRATORS gathered outside the US embassy in London last Friday for a protest picket in support of Bradley Manning, the American veteran of the Iraqi accused of leaking secrets to Wikileaks.
The vigil was organised by Veterans for Peace UK and London Catholic Worker to call for all charges to be dropped against the former US intelligence analyst, who is accused of leaking a video of the killing of civilians, including two Reuters journalists, by a US helicopter gunship in Iraq and passing other sensitive material exposing US war-crimes and those of their mercenaries in occupied Iraq to Wikileaks.
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Stop the killing in Afghanistan
by New Worker correspondent
NEW WORKER supporters joined protesters outside the Prime Minister’s official London residence last week to call for the immediate withdrawal of all British troops from Afghanistan and an end to the Nato war, which has brought death and destruction to millions of innocent Afghan civilians over the past 11 years.
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Syrians defy Nato smears and violence in London
by New Worker correspondent
New Worker supporters and other peace activists joined several hundred London-based Syrians outside their embassy in Belgravia Square last Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the launch of the Nato-inspired and funded rebellion against the Baathist-led popular front government of Bashar al-Assad.
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International News
World —wide support wins Cuba trip for Miami Five fighter
by Lauren Gómez
THANKS to worldwide support, Cuban anti-terrorist fighter Rene Gonzalez, who is now on probation in the United States, has been granted permission to travel to Cuba.
Judge Joan Lenard, of the South Florida Federal District Court, approved the motion presented for Rene Gonzalez to travel to Cuba after the US Department of Justice had recently rejected the petition, under what it called FBI security concerns.
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French Left Front marches in Paris
by our European Affairs correspondent
TENS OF THOUSANDS of people rallied in Paris last Sunday in support of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the Left Front challenger in the forthcoming French presidential election.
The Left Front (Front de gauche) is a broad left electoral platform set up in 2009 by the French Communist Party, the Left Party and the Unitarian Left along with some left social-democrats and some small Marxist-Leninist groups
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EU slams Belarus for what America does all the time
by Vadim Trukhachev
A NEW scandal is brewing in the relations between Belarus and the European Union. This time it’s about execution of two young men found guilty of carrying out the terrorist bombing in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in 2011.
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Hypocritical rhetoric of the ‘Human Rights’ council
Radio Havana Cuba
CUBA has warned of attempts by the United States and its European allies to make the Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, a platform of prosecutions and attacks on Southern nations, as if the ones who selected themselves as “judges” had an honest record.
This is not the first time this manoeuvre has been used and it won’t be the last, given the western powers’ obsession to proclaim themselves as models of the privileges of citizens, when their daily life reflects a different truth.
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Features
Hollywood: Why ‘Viola Davis was robbed’ of an Academy Award
by Monica Moorehead
AT THE 84th Academy Awards ceremony on 26th February, a stunning, brilliant female actor, Viola Davis, lost to another brilliant female actor, Meryl Streep, for the best lead actress award. Davis is African-American and Streep is white. Due to the predominance of social media and communication, this development fuelled not just a national debate but a worldwide debate. There were many tweets saying, “Viola Davis was robbed.”
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New life for the farmers of Ecuador
Radio Havana Cuba
RURAL areas are changing in Ecuador. The revolution carried out by President Rafael Correa has brought important transformations for the benefit of farmers.
The social programmes implemented during the last five years have reduced poverty to seven per cent in the rural areas, and to 12 per cent among the farmers.
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