National News
Health Cuts
by New Worker correspondent
WHAT do you do with your health services when you are in the midst of a global pandemic? The obvious answer in at least two cases seems to be to cut them down to size. In County Durham, where COVID-19 is still widespread, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust (HDFT), who are soon taking over the county’s 0–25 family health service, plan to cut about 37 full time equivalent (FTE) nurses.
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Sacking Threats
by New Worker correspondent
NHS Lanarkshire has told exhausted nurses that they could face disciplinary action if they take a foreign holiday and have to self-isolate on their return.
The instructions, which in fact came from the Scottish National Party Government, provoked health unions to demand intervention from Health Secretary Jeanne Freeman.
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Rewards for Failure
by New Worker correspondent
Over the last five years the share price of Centrica, the owner of British Gas, slumped from £2.71 to a low of 47p last Friday, after the annual results showed profits have dropped 14 per cent and it has lost 226,000 customers in the UK. A few weeks earlier 5,000 redundancies were announced by the company, who also told staff they must accept new conditions including longer hours, no overtime pay and reduced benefits, or risk being sacked.
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Ecclesiastical News
by New Worker correspondent
ABOUT a fifth of workers at an important London establishment are at risk of redundancy when the government’s job retention scheme ends in October.
It’s Westminster Abbey, where funds are very tight because it has been closed to visitors and its income is down by more than £12 million. As the Abbey no longer has land and serfs it is dependent on tourists.
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Boris Johnson’s summer soldiers
Sputnik
A YEAR after taking office, Boris Johnson has seen his popularity plunge overall, even amongst fellow Tories, due to criticism of his handling of the pandemic and the economic downturn it has brought about.
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Defending free speech
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
THE Scottish National Party (SNP) Government has achieved the remarkable feat of uniting against it a wide range of opponents ranging from most of Scotland’s lawyers, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) and the Free Church of Scotland. These unlikely allies are united in their dislike of the proposed Hate Crime & Public Order (Scotland) Bill, which its promoter Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf calls an “important milestone”.
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Virus Latest
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
More and more details are coming out to demonstrate that the SNP Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been just as bad as that of Boris Johnson, although to be fair to the SNP they have been much better than the Tories at managing the news to creating the impression they are doing well.
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Curious Boycotts
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
It is not uncommon for political activists to call for boycotts of produce from counties and organisations they disapprove of. In the past, opponents of slavery boycotted Caribbean sugar and anti-apartheid activists never cease to remind us of how they heroically deprived themselves of South African wine. In Scotland however, some of the nationalist fraternity have given the tactic a strange new twist. The businesses they seek to boycott are almost invariably Scottish.
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Taking the knee in Feltham
by Siobhan Kelly
THE MURDER of George Floyd by racist cops in Minneapolis in May sparked protests that have rocked the USA and a wave of solidarity actions in Britain and the rest of Europe. The British Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has taken the lead in the campaign demanding racial equality, social and criminal justice, and basic human rights. Last Sunday they took the knee for George Floyd in the Feltham Arcade in West London.
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International News
Washington won’t win a new Cold War
by Ai Jun
THESE DAYS, quite a few people wake up every morning to find themselves getting closer to a new cold war between Beijing and Washington, thanks to unceasing insane provocations by US anti-China hawks. Although disputes remain on whether this new cold war is on, a voice has already emerged in the USA – if the USA could cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, why can’t it collapse China?
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Playing with fire
by Ed Newman
PROTESTS against racism continued over the weekend in several cities across the USA, now antagonised by President Donald Trump’s decision to send federal forces to suppress and detain protesters – only adding fuel to the fire.
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Concern for Africa
Radio Havana Cuba
AT FIRST, Africa was amongst the regions least affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but a sudden increase of cases in recent days raises concern because of the conditions of extreme poverty and the total abandonment of many countries on the continent.
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Nina Alexandrovna Andreyeva 1938–2020
NINA Alexandrovna Andreyeva has passed away in St Petersburg, the city known as Leningrad during the Soviet era. The leader of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB) died on 24th July 2020 after a long illness.
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Call me an immigrant, not an expat
by Peter Cowan
BLAME IT on the heat, having coronavirus on the brain or whatever you want, but when I was asked to come up with an idea for Vietnam News’ regular Expat Corner column this week I was stumped.
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Features
Iconoclash: Removing racist monuments doesn’t erase history
by Al Neal
LITTERED throughout the annals of history are bits and pieces of chipped stone, melted-down iron, bronze, copper, and the fine chalky grey sand that was once sculpting clay. They are the remnants of once stunning visual monuments, no longer relevant in some subsequent era or newly established political dynasty.
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Black left views on US elections matter
by Arnold August
NETFA FREEMAN is an organiser for Pan-African Community Action and the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. He is also a radio talk-show host of the popular DC-based Voices with Vision, and an active supporter of the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions. Freeman says that the principal message he has for readers is: “The Black left perspective is that our struggle is for power”.
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The real face of Putin’s Russia
CPRF
“THE SYSTEMIC crisis, which has been aggravated by the pandemic of a previously unknown coronavirus and the plummeting of the world prices of raw materials, has laid bare the catastrophic costs of the capitalist system. These costs are manifesting themselves all over the planet.
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