National News
Waiting times for cancer treatment have soared
PEOPLE diagnosed with cancer are waiting longer and longer for treatment to begin as average waiting times have soared according to data obtained by the Labour Party. The report says that one cancer patient waited 541 days for NHS treatment.
The official target requires at least 85 per cent of cancer patients to have their first treatment within 62 days of referral by their GP, but this has not been met for 27 months in a row.
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Tories to invest another £2.5 billion in nuclear submarines
DEFENCE Secretary Gavin Williamson last week today announced the Ministry of Defence is investing a massive £2.5 billion in increasing Britain’s submarine building projects
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Benefit sanctions don’t get people into work
THE GOVERNMENT claims that making welfare benefits conditional on the claimants doing certain things, like keeping appointments and looking for a certain number of jobs every week gets more people into jobs. But this has been disproved by a recent study which shows that threats of sanctions have an opposite effect.
The Economic and Social Research Council-funded welfare conditionality study was carried out between 2013 and 2018 by researchers at six universities
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Grenfell cladding never tested
THE INSULATION cladding on the outside of the Grenfell tower that ignited like a torch in June last year, leading to the deaths of 72 people and life changing injuries to many more, had never been safety tested, according to a BBC investigation aired in last Monday’s Panorama programme.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Licence to print P45s
“A LICENCE to print money,” was how proprietor Roy Thompson described Scottish Television at its launch in 1957. Things are a bit different now (at least for the workers). The TV company has announced plans to cut 59 jobs (about 10 per cent of the workforce), of which 34 are news jobs and the other 25 will result from the closure of its recently-launched loss-making channel STV2.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Fair work fraud
In December 2016 the Scottish National Party minister for “Fair Work”, Keith Brown, triumphantly announced that he had persuaded the online retailing giant Amazon to consider paying the real living wage (RLW) of £8.75 per hour established by the Living Wage Foundation.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Another dodgy company
Needless to say, Amazon is not the only dodgy company on whom the SNP government bestows its largesse. Kier construction is presently benefitting to the tune of £181 million worth of contracts awarded by the SNP government despite it being investigated by the police for criminal activities over botched work on the DG One leisure centre in Dumfries
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A colourful character
Our favourite SNP MSP, John Mason, is in the news again. Famous for saying it does not matter if surgeons cannot spell and for advocating the teaching of creationism in Scottish schools, he has put his foot in it again
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Anger as rail staff told to leave disabled on the platform
by New Worker correspondent
A NOISY and angry crowd of disabled people gathered outside the main entrance to London Bridge Rail Station on Monday evening after learning that a new instruction handbook has told rail staff employed by Govia Thameslink (GTR), which includes Southern Rail, that people in wheelchairs are no longer to be assisted on to trains if this will cause a delay
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Bristol Labour against the witch-hun
New Worker correspondent
LABOUR Against the Witch-Hunt organised a meeting last Monday, to pass on the latest news in the campaign to get Marc Wadsworth’s expulsion from the Labour Party reversed.
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International News
Congratulations to Venezuela’s President Maduro on his re-election
Telesur
THE PRIME ministers of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda resoundingly congratulated Maduro on his second win last week.
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expels two US diplomats
Telesur
PRESIDENT Nicolas Maduro said United States ChargÉ d’Affaires Todd Robinson and head of political affairs Brian Naranjo have 48 hours to leave Venezuela.
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Stop the war threats against Korea!
Workers World (US)
WORKERS World Party (US) condemns the threatening moves made by the Trump administration and the Pentagon that have deliberately undercut the momentum and planning for a 12th June summit meeting between the US and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
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Features
A present based on memory
Granma
AS SOON as Namibia achieved its independence, the nation established diplomatic relations with Cuba, an island 11,000 kilometres away.
It was 21st March 1990. Ndapandula Akwaake had not yet been born, much less could her family have imagined that one day she, or some other relative, would travel to the Caribbean island experiencing a Revolution — the impact of which was felt, in a very special way, back there.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
US threatens wider war on Syria and Iran
Workers World (US)
PRESIDENT Donald Trump announced on 8th May that the United States was unilaterally leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — and effectively taking a path of direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. New sanctions were announced, to take effect within months. Literally hours after the announcement, Israeli missiles rained down just south of Syria’s capital
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How best to deal with a bully
Syria Times
BRITISH publisher and editor of Politics First magazine, Dr Marcus Papadopoulos, has asserted that Syria’s military response to Israeli aggression in the early hours of 10th May demonstrates how best to deal with a bully, indicating that Israel is looking to provoke a war with Syria and Iran, in the hope that this would bring about a direct military confrontation between America, on the one hand, and Syria and Iran, on the other hand.
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