Lead story

Massive support for striking doctors

by Daphne Liddle

THOUSANDS of people, including a large contingent of teachers, braved hail and snow to rally in central London on Tuesday evening to support the cause of the junior doctors in their latest strike against the imposition of a new working contract which they say is “unfair and unsafe”.

This was the first all-out strike in this dispute — with the junior doctors offering no cover for emergencies between the hours of 8am and 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was among the protesters as he gave his full support to the doctors’ cause and spoke at the rally in Whitehall, outside the headquarters of the Department for Health.

He told the crowd: “Don’t worry, not all Jeremys are bad.” He told them that the NHS is “under threat from a Government that is more interested in attacking the core of the NHS than supporting the NHS and people that keep us all alive”.

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Massive support for striking doctors

Cardiff and Swansea museum workers strike

MUSEUM workers in South Wales last week went on strike and took to the streets to protest about cuts to the lowest paid staff for shifts worked on Saturdays.

Demonstrations took place at the National Museum in Cathays Park, Cardiff, and at Swansea Waterfront Museum.

Workers in Cardiff then headed to Cardiff City Stadium to join Cardiff People’s Assembly and Public and Commercial Services Union members, to fundraise and give out leaflets before Cardiff City’s game with Bolton Wanderers.

This was as part of action taken by workers at six Welsh museums who are going on strike over four weekends during April because of a threat to scrap unsocial payments for weekend working.

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Cardiff and Swansea museum workers strike

Editorial

Time to cut the poodle’s lead

WHEN Obama visited Britain to tell us that if we vote to leave the European Union on 23rd June we will end up “at the back of the queue” for signing any trade deals with the United States, he did us a very big favour. It means we would definitely escape TTIP (The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), which is a series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret between the European Union (EU) and USA.

We already knew that TTIP threatened to give unrestricted opportunities to businesses to make maximum profits, with the right to sue governments at national or local levels that impeded them in any way with planning laws, health and safety laws, anti-discrimination laws, labour laws or any other by-laws. All our services, including the NHS, would be freely available for privatisation, which could not be reversed.

But last week a disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed officially that TTIP will have “few or no benefits to the UK”, according to information dragged from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills by the campaigners from Global Justice Now.

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Time to cut the poodle’s lead