National News
More Brexit woes for May
Sputnik
THERESA MAY arrived in Scotland this week amidst strong criticism over her handling of the divorce negotiations with the European Union (EU).
Ahead of her Tuesday meeting with Theresa May in Edinburgh, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon warned that the prime minister’s repeated threats of a no-deal Brexit as a negotiating ploy could make the prospect of a no-deal Brexit more likely, the Guardian reported.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Pink dawn at the financial Times
by New Worker correspondent
A GROUP of trade unionists have called upon their Chief Executive to hand back some of his immense £2.55 million salary to reward all his staff, saying that the boss’s salary “makes a mockery of any concept of fairness”.
The unlikely bolshie workers are the National Union of Journalists’ financial Times chapel who expressed their “collective outrage” at their boss John Ridding getting a pay rise of £509,000 to £2.55m (including pension contributions), up from a pay packet of £2.04m the year before. This, the Father of Chapel said, was 65 per cent of the FT Ltd’s operating profit of £4 million, which on paper represented a 40 per cent fall on the previous year.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Sign or be sacked
by New Worker correspondent
WORKERS at Sainsbury’s supermarket are facing a “sign or be sacked” ultimatum from their bosses. 123,000 workers in 1,000 stores across Britain now face dismissal if they don’t sign new contracts.
The chain is proposing to increase basic pay from £8.00 to £9.20 an hour (£9.80 in London). If this sounds generous it is worth remembering that a mere 50 centilitre bottle of their own brand of blended whisky cost £10.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Failure to get their stories straight in ‘Novichok’ scandal
>Sputnik
THE RUSSIAN Embassy in London has pointed to a number of inconsistencies between the authorities’ repeated assurances that the latest Amesbury incident poses no threat to the wider public and their precautionary measures toward the incident-related sites taken a month after the alleged poisoning
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Skule Newz
THE TRADE UNION for Scottish councils, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), has warned that Scottish schools are in such a poor financial state as a result of SNP budget cuts, which amount to £400 million in the last decade, that they will no longer be able to cover all essential services.
A COSLA spokesman warned: “We are faced with a situation where demand for our essential services outstrips our ability to pay for them all.” They were responding to figures from the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre which show that the sum spent by councils on schools was £5.3 billion in 2009—10 but had fallen to £4.9 billion in 2017—18, a decline of 7.5 per cent or £400 million.
Secondary schools came off worse, having £354 million less now than nine years ago, special education budget fell from £575 million to £548 million. Cash for primary schools rose slightly, from £1.9 billion to £1.95 billion, as did that for pre-primary education, which increased from £358 million to £410 million, the later largely a welcome boom for private nurseries.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
BBC picket
by New Worker correspondent
LABOUR activists picketed Broadcasting House in London on Tuesday to protest at the BBC’s biased reporting and its failure to report fairly.and impartially about the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
The picket outside the BBC’s HQ was supported by a number of rank-and-file movements including Brent Momentum, Labour Against the Witchunt and Jewish Voice for Labour.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Brighton’s Regency gem
by Carole Barclay
THE BRIGHTON Centre, is the largest conference venue in southern England. Open by Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977 the Centre can accommodate over five thousand delegates and it continues to host Labour and trade union conferences to this day. Sadly few stray beyond the sea-front watering holes during conference season to seek out Brighton’s past that lies only a stone’s throw away.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Vanessa Redgrave to receive Golden Lion at Venice festival
Xinhua
VANESSA Redgrave will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice International film Festival. The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, on recommendation of the Director of the Venice film Festival, Alberto Barbera.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
International News
Maduro assassination bid foiled — traitors seized
Radio Havana Cuba
VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro survived an attempt on his life during a military parade in the capital, Caracas, last weekend.
The attack against President Maduro took place during the celebrations of the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard. Two drones packed with explosives were detonated near the presidential platform, injuring seven military personnel.
In a televised national address late Saturday, Maduro laid blame for the attack on right-wing imperialist forces who he said had hired the would-be assassins.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Mass protest in Tel Aviv
CP Israel
“WE want equality!” chanted 90,000 people at an unprecedented demonstration led by the Druze community in protest against the racist Nation-State Law at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, on Saturday night.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Ecuador sets terms for Assange’s departure
Sputnik
MORE THAN six years after Julian Assange moved into the confines of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the WikiLeaks founder may finally end his self-imposed isolation
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Mnangagwa takes clear lead in Zimbabwe
Sputnik
ACCORDING to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), President Emmerson Mnangagwa has a significant lead in the counting of votes from last week’s presidential election.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Features
Seeking succour in the land of the free
Guardian Australian communist weekly
THE PEOPLE scaling the very tall barbed-wire fences that bedeck the Rio Grande and making their way across no-man’s-land land between Mexico and the USA, hoping to find work in the ‘land of the free’, are declared by the US President to be social misfits, criminals both petty and violent, the source of every undesirable national trait in the USA.
He cultivates and perpetuates a very comforting American social myth: that people trying to enter the USA do so because — and only because — they are envious and want to share in ‘the American dream’.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
New Israeli legislation parallels Nazi race laws
Workers World (US)
ROUGHLY 80 years after Nazi Germany enacted what became known as the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, the Israeli parliament in July codified a new Jewish supremacy law, which effectively mirrors the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Fake news criminalises dissent
Sputnik
ON 30th July the mainstream media reported widely that a young teenager, known by the pseudonym ‘Aaron’, was referred to Prevent, the government anti-extremism programme, due to concerns he was “groomed” for environmental activism by anti-fracking campaigners. The story has since been admitted to be false - and campaigners say it’s a palpable example of authorities criminalising dissent.
The story was based on a case study included in a report published by Greater Manchester Police’s ‘Tackling Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission’, launched in the wake of the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing attack.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Slaves in Britain today
Radio Havana Cuba
RIGHTS campaigners have accused the British government of lagging behind in estimating how many people are being exploited as slaves in the country, saying data provided by the Home Office on the issue are not correct.
“This is likely to be seriously flawed as it is based on outdated estimates from 2014 of up to 13,000 people in slavery,” said Jakub Sobik, a spokesman for Anti-Slavery International
[Read the complete story in the print edition]