National News
Shop closures at record level
THE retail industry is facing a more testing environment than ever as store closures hit record in the first half of this year, a new report revealed last week.
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Asda price
by New Worker correspondent
MONDAY saw thousands of workers at Asda supermarkets across the country hold protests against plans by the bosses to impose new contracts on the pain of the sack. Owned by the notoriously anti-union American company Walmart, Asda’s profits rose by 13 per cent to £805 million according to its latest accounts. In the same period 5,000 jobs were lost. Thousands of Asda workers across the UK protested in anger at the new contracts.
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On the Rails
by New Worker correspondent
WORKERS ON the Scottish Sleeper rail services, which transports the landed aristocracy between London to and from their Highland estates, are taking strike action and action short of a strike on the Caledonian Sleeper services after the operator, SERCO, was accused of reneging on pledges to address a raft of serious concerns raised by staff that have ruined working lives and placed the workforce under intolerable pressure.
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Uncharitable charity
by New Worker correspondent
THIRTY-ONE drug and alcohol support workers employed by the Addaction charity in the North West took two days of strike action last week, in protest against broken promises over pay. They had previously been employed by the NHS but the service, which is commissioned by Wigan Council, was transferred to the London-based charity.
Workers continued to receive pay rises in line with those of NHS employees and were given assurances by the organisation’s managers that this would continue into the future.
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A third of income on rent
by Mu Xuequan
TENANTS in their 20s across Britain spent some 34 per cent of their pre-tax income on rent in the year to-date, Hamptons International, the London-based estate and letting agent, said on Monday.
Hamptons International’s Monthly Lettings Index showed that Brighton was the least affordable city in UK, with room rents accounting for 35 per cent of tenants’ pre-tax income. London ranked second with 34 per cent.
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Trump urged to withhold sensitive info from Corbyn
by Svetlana Ekimenko
AS THE Brexit saga continues the embattled Prime Minister has been publicly supported by US President Donald Trump, who called him “exactly what the UK has been looking for”, while opposition voices, led by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, lambasted a no-deal Brexit as “really a Trump Deal Brexit”.
Now, according to the Telegraph, a United States Army War College professor’s report has urged Donald Trump to refrain from sharing sensitive information with Britain and possibly push for the UK’s NATO membership to be “downgraded” in the event that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the country’s Labour Party, is elected Prime Minister.
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The SNP’s bill of health
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
THE Scottish National Party’s manifesto for the 2015 General Election was emblazoned with the newly minted acronym “NHSNP”, which depicted a nurse’s uniform with word in the style of the NHS logo. This is the sort of thing cut-price supermarkets do when they flog cheaper versions of established brands.
About half the SNP government’s entire budget goes on the NHS but the results of the NHSNP under successive health secretaries of that ilk are not very impressive. Its own targets are missed regularly.
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Support the Kashmiri people!
by New Worker correspondent
MEMBERS of London’s Pakistani community joined New Worker supporters to call for justice for the Kashmiri people at a meeting in central London last week. They had come to the Cock Tavern in Euston to hear NCP leader Andy Brooks and Mushtaq Lasharie, who chairs the Third World Solidarity movement, demand the immediate and unconditional end to martial law in Indian-held Kashmir and support the Kashmiri people’s call for self-determination.
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Korean solidarity in Bulgaria
by New Worker correspondent
KOREAN SOLIDARITY activists met last weekend to take part in a Juche seminar in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Dermot Hudson from the JuchÉ Idea Study Group joined other European delegates for a seminar on the theme of Independence, Sovereignty and International Co-Operation which was supported by the International Institute of the JuchÉ Idea and the Korean Association of Social Scientists.
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The Capture
TV REVIEW
by Ben Soton
The Capture (2019). Dir: Ben Chanan. Starring: Laura Haddock, Hiten Patel, Holliday Granger.
THE CAPTURE, BBC1’s Tuesday night thriller, is a conspiracy theorist’s dream. Its central theme is the use of CCTV surveillance and facial recognition software; raising the question of can you believe what you see?
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International News
American car workers walk out
Radio Havana Cuba
THE United Auto Workers union (UAW) called a nationwide strike against General Motors (GM) on Sunday, with some 46,000 members at the Detroit plant and elsewhere walking off the job at midnight following a breakdown in talks with Management.
The decision, which the Wall Street Journal described as the first major stoppage at GM in more than a decade, came a day after the manufacturer’s four-year contract with workers expired without an agreement on a replacement. Adding to the friction is a federal corruption probe of the union leadership, which resulted in an FBI search last month of the home of UAW President Gary Jones.
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Regime change in the Vatican?
by Lena Valverde Jordi
HIGH-POWER economic groups, which include some officials in the Trump administration, could be conducting a conspiracy to depose Pope Francis and achieve the election of a new Pontiff closer to their interests.
Such is the charge levelled by a French journalist in an extensively researched article, How America wants to change Popes!, that recently appeared in La Croix, a French Roman Catholic daily.
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Snowden looks to France
Sputnik
FORMER US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden hopes that France will grant him asylum, according to a France Inter radio interview on Monday. It was not immediately clear when or where the interview took place.
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Don’t give up, fight the good fight!
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
THE WORLD is a better place because people fight for this. But for every action, there is a reaction. We need to remember that what we have won can be lost.
Observe any group of antelopes, or any other animal of choice, and you will see more or less the same thing: a group of dominant males vying for leadership, another group of younger males awaiting their turn, and a group of females whose lot it is to procreate and look after the kids. Those who are already chortling in self-righteousness and agreeing that the woman’s place is in the kitchen therefore place themselves at the same level as a herd of cattle.
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Features
Cameron slams Johnson in memoirs
by Svetlana Ekimenko
DAVID CAMERON has given a lengthy interview for the Times on the eve of the publication of his memoirs, For The Record, which will be launched next week.
After a period of silence that lasted three years, the former Conservative prime minister shared some of his personal anguish over his decision to call for a referendum on the UK leaving the European Union.
On the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union Cameron is both defensive and apologetic, saying he has “many regrets” about the vote and how he “failed”, adding: “I did not fully anticipate the strength of feeling that would be unleashed both during the referendum and afterwards, and I am truly sorry to have seen the country I love so much suffer uncertainty and division in the years since then.”
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The rise of American imperialism
by Charles McKelvey
THE DEFENDERS of imperialism want to convince the people that the wealthy nations are deserving of their wealth, that they have accumulated material things through hard work and intelligence, and through these qualities, they have made great contributions to humanity. In the case of the USA, these virtues include an ethic of hard work, individual initiative, and practical intelligence.
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The path which led me to Leninism
by Ho Chi Minh
AFTER World War I, I made my living in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photographer’s, now as painter of “Chinese antiquities” (made in France!). I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Vietnam.
At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots; until then, I had read none of his books.
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