National News
London stands with Palestine!
by Theo Russell
THOUSANDS of supporters of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality protested outside the Israeli embassy in London last Saturday, one of more than 25 actions marking one year since the start of the Great Return March to the border with Israel. They were responding to the call of the Palestinian Forum in Britain and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), supported by the Stop the War movement and the Muslim Association of Britain, to show solidarity with the victims of Zionist terror in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Minimum wages
by New Worker correspondent
ACCORDING to an investigation by general union GMB, millions of workers would earn more than £7,500 per annum if the National Minimum Wage (NMW) had risen at the same pace as that for the bosses.
The NMW was introduced 20 years ago by the Blair government, despite justified warnings from the New Communist Party that it would soon become the maximum wage.
The GMB investigation shows that had the NMW kept pace with the average pay of FTSE 100 chief executive officers, it would now be £11.41 per hour, instead of the new £8.21 rate for workers aged 25 or older. This represents an additional £6,655 per year for a worker on 40 hours per week.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Shot across the bows
by New Worker correspondent
SINCE IT was established by Henry VIII in 1514, the workforce employed by The Master Wardens and Assistants of the Guild Fraternity or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity and of St Clement in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the County of Kent has not been noted for its militancy.
This is changing. The Trinity Trust, as it is known in its mercifully shortened form, is responsible for the safety of the shipping on coasts of England, the Channel Island and Wales, thus it is responsible for maintaining lighthouses and lightships.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Paltry pay offer
by New Worker correspondent
ON THE same day, and on dry land, workers at TSP Engineering Ltd in Workington, Cumbria also had a 24-hour strike over a “paltry” pay offer.
Over 90 workers from Unite, including crane drivers, electricians, fitters, machinists, mechanics, platers, team leaders and welders, voted by 90 per cent for strike action and by 96 per cent for industrial action short of a strike, after rejecting a one off £450 payment (in lieu of two per cent back pay from April 2018) and four per cent from April 2019.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Down the drain
by New Worker correspondent
TO CELEBRATE the coming of spring last weekend, water and sewerage bills for households in England and Wales went up two per cent to an average of £415 per year.
This represents a 40 per cent increase above inflation since the water industry was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1989 on the back of a false promise for greater investment to improve efficiency.
Stuart Fegan, GMB’s national officer for the industry industry’s workers, said that this is “insulting to customers”.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Tax fraud funded Al Qaeda
WHILST THE criminals stole vast sums of money via elaborate fraud schemes, the tax authorities allegedly “did little to disrupt the network” for years.
A criminal network based in the UK managed to steal billions of pounds worth of taxpayer money via fraudulent schemes and used a portion of these gains to help fund al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Sunday Times reports, citing police and intelligence documents.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
On the shelves
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
IN SEPTEMBER the new V&A Museum on Dundee’s waterfront opened to much acclaim. When it was approved the construction costs for the upsidedown building, which is supposed to look like a ship, were budgeted at £45 million. Its final cost was £80 million, partly because it was built so near the River Tay that it needed extra foundations to stop it falling in.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Off the Rails
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Sometimes strongly anti-SNP polemicists intemperately describe the SNP as fascist. The easiest way for the SNP to refute this crude insult is to point out that unlike the claims made on behalf of Mussolini the trains definitely do not actually run on time under Scottish nationalist rule.
Railways in Scotland are owned by a state-owned company — but it is called Nederlandse Spoorwegen. In Scotland its subsidiary is called Abellio. Once its Dutch annual report gave the game away and openly boasted that the third-rate Scottish franchise helped subsidise its services in Holland.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Terracotta Warriors boost Liverpool tourism
by Li Xia
CHINA’S Terracotta Warriors have helped Liverpool’s World Museum to become the most visited English museum outside London in 2018, it was announced last week.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
International News
DPRK demands inquiry into embassy raid
by New Worker correspondent
THE DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has called on Spain to hold a proper investigation into the attack on the DPRK embassy in Madrid in February. The Spanish media have been suggesting that US intelligence was behind the attack; but the Spanish National Court says that the leader of the group claims to have acted on his own initiative and only contacted the FBI after he fled to the USA.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
More Palestinians killed in Gaza
by Jorge Ruiz Miyares
AT LEAST four protesters were killed by Israeli troops and more than 10 others wounded as Palestinians stage massive rallies along the Israel—Gaza border — part of the resistance campaign launched exactly one year ago.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Russia wants peace in Ukraine
Sputnik
UKRAINE held its presidential election on Sunday. Comedian Volodymyr Zelensk
y is leading with over 30 per cent of the votes whilst the incumbent president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is ranking second with 16.19 per cent after over 70 per cent of the ballots counted. The second round is expected to take place if no candidate secures the 50 percent majority.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Syria slams US at United Nations
Radio Havana Cuba
SYRIA’S United Nations (UN) ambassador has suggested that the USA “hand over a couple of its own states” to Israel instead of flouting international law and selling others’ land for favours with the Israeli lobby, like it did with the Golan Heights.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Navy Chief confirms Iraq War WMDs charade
by Neil Clark
SIXTEEN YEARS on from the start of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, further evidence has emerged that the war was planned long before the attack took place and that the stated reason for it, the supposed ‘Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMDs), was bogus.
Speaking before the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee last week, the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral The Lord West of Spithead, revealed that he was told in June 2002, “that we would be invading Iraq with America at the beginning of the following year”.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Vietnam: English teacher fights to learn
by Lê Hương
TRADITIONAL Vietnamese martial arts can reveal more about local history, culture and language to foreigners daring enough to try them. Augustus John Roe, from Brighton, is certainly daring.
Over the last nine years, he has lived in Vietnam, fathered two daughters in his happy family, found a stable job as an English teacher at an international school in Hànội, and gathered a comprehensive stock of knowledge on Vietnamese martial arts and culture.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Features
Korea is One
by Wayne Sonter
THE SUMMIT held in Hanoi in February, between the leaders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States of America, was meant to be part of a process to normalise US—DPRK relations and to allow for a stable and lasting peace on the Korean peninsula, including its de-nuclearisation. This was in line with the Korean and American people’s desire for peace and prosperity.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Women in China: heading towards equality
by Bennett Guillaume in Shanghai
ANY EVALUATION of gender equality in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by a Western man with a less-than-rudimentary knowledge of Chinese must be tentative.
Let’s begin by noting that one State does not equal one condition. Like all large countries, and not only large ones, China is a land of regions with significantly different levels of development and varying cultural tendencies. It is no great insight to point out, for example, that the ‘politics’ of the domestic sphere — the household — are significant in determining the public status of women.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
