National News
What a difference a day makes
by New Worker correspondent
LAST WEEK Unite the Union and the Co-operative Bank joined forces to announce that they would support their employees participating in the Global Climate Strike protests by allowing them to take part in demonstrations — but only if someone was left in the office.
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One minute late
by New Worker correspondent
“THIS is probably one of the most outrageous dismissals by Royal Mail and Tribunal verdict I’ve ever heard about”. Thus said a Communication Workers Union (CWU) spokesman when an Employment Tribunal upheld the sacking of a postman’s dismissal for allegedly being one minute late with a special delivery.
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Johnson backs Trump over Iran
by Svetlana Ekimenko
PRIME Minister Boris Johnson has called for a new “Trump deal” to replace the existing Iran nuclear agreement, winning kudos from the US president.
The currently-existing nuclear pact with Tehran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 by Iran and six world powers. Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA in March 2018, but other signatories have remained committed to the deal on paper — until now.
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Republican call on Labour’s fringe at Brighton
Sputnik
THE Queen’s name has been dragged through the mud this week with the Supreme Court ruling that her order to prorogue Parliament was “unlawful”. The incident has focused attention again on the monarch’s role as Britain’s head of state.
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A sinking ship
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
ONE OF the Scottish National Party (SNP) government’s flagship policies has finally sunk below the waves. This is the ‘Named Person Scheme’, which was a major part of their Children and Young People [Scotland] Act passed in 2014.
This imposed a state official appointed, even before birth, to monitor the wellbeing of every single child born in Scotland from birth up until the age of 18. The law also greatly lowered the levels for when a social worker’s intervention is deemed appropriate. One of the earliest appointments of a ‘Named Person’ turned out to be a school teacher with a sexual offence to her name.
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All Things to All Men
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Meanwhile the SNP are keeping themselves occupied with a string of internal battles that have reached such a state of affairs that the first Minister has threatened to take away the mobile phones and inspect the emails of the warring senior officials who spend their time and energies briefing against other SNP members.
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The Monklands MacMafia Again
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Another case of SNP infighting came to light on Tuesday when the SNP HQ was accused of riding roughshod over the party’s own constitution and denying activists a voice because they might vote the wrong way.
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Womens’ rights in Democratic Korea
by New Worker correspondent
WOMENS’ rights in Democratic Korea was the theme of a Korean Friendship Association (KFA) meeting in London last weekend. NCP leader Andy Brooks joined KFA chair Dermot Hudson in talking about the life of women in Juche Korea at the Chadswell Centre in central London on Saturday.
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REVIEW
More historical fiction
by Ben Soton
Feud by Derek Birks (2015). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
ISBN: 9781910944004; paperback, 556pp; £12.99.
I PICKED up this novel, first published in 2015, at the Chalke Valley History Festival in July this year. For those unaware of this event, the festival is a kind of right-wing Tolpuddle; this year’s star attraction was Jacob Rees Mogg.
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Top British troupe makes China debut
Xinhua
CAMBRIDGE Shakespeare Festival artistic director David Crilly will lead his troupe to stage classic Shakespearean dramas in the hometown of Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu in east China’s Jiangxi province during a Sino-British culture exchange week in October.
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International News
Houthi oil hit plunges region into new crisis
by Lena Valverde Jordi
POLITICAL and economic instability is affecting a major part of our Planet Earth following the recent attack by groups of drones against oil installations in Saudi Arabia, including the largest oil refinery in the world.
The damage has halted the production of 5.7 million barrels of oil per day but distribution has not ceased because Saudi Arabia has enough storage capacity in several other countries across the world, including the Netherlands and Egypt, from where it can continue to supply its clients.
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Climate activists hold world leaders accountable at UN
by Ed Newman
YOUNG climate change activists delivered a strong message to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterre: If elected officials do not take strong actions to combat climate change, they will be voted out of office.
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Hadash could lead Israeli Opposition
CP Israel
THE communist-led Joint List is set to be the largest non-ruling bloc in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament — and may possibly even lead the opposition — if a national unity government emerges from last week’s general election. The Joint List has presented its stronger showing in the rerun election as a victory over what it described as an “unprecedented campaign of incitement against the Arab public” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing parties.
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Maduro lands in Moscow
by our European Affairs correspondent
THE President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for talks to assess bilateral relations and US political, economic and media aggression against the Bolivarian Republic. On Wednesday the Venezuelan leader held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. His last meeting with the Russian leader was in December.
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Addiction and recovery: Time for progressive strategies?
by Brian Major
CANADA is clearly in the middle of a severe addiction crisis. What is presently lacking is a coherent approach to what can be done to prevent so many of us from dying. In 2018, for example, a reported 4,460 people died from opioid overdoses in Canada.
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Appalling infant mortality figures!!
by Lena Valverde Jordi
THE World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, have just issued separate reports that show appalling figures of maternal and child mortality in the world, a scourge that, even if it shows a slight reduction, continues to punish the less developed nations.
The situation was painfully painted by the UNICEF Executive Director, Henrietta Fore, when she said that every child birth is usually a happy event in any family, but for many on Planet Earth today it becomes a tragedy that takes place every eleven seconds.
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Features
There’s more to Cameron’s legacy than an EU referendum
by Neil Clark
IN THE classic 1949 British black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (recently re-released in a special 70th anniversary digitally-restored version), Louis Mazzini, the suave and impeccably well-mannered serial killer played so superbly by Dennis Price, is approached by a man from Scotland Yard and told he is under arrest on suspicion of murder.
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Charles E Ruthenberg: The first leader of the Communist Party USA
by C J Atkins
AT THE TIME of his death in 1927, he was lauded as “one of the most indicted and imprisoned workers” in the history of the American labour movement. Yet today, few know the name Charles Emil Ruthenberg. When he passed away suddenly at the age of 44, he cheated a Michigan prison of its next inmate and left a young Communist Party USA (CPUSA)—then called the Workers (Communist) Party—in mourning for its first general secretary.
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