National News
All right for some
by New Worker correspondent
NOT EVERYONE worries about a £10 hourly wage. The High Pay Centre (HPC) announced at breakfast time last Friday, 7 January (9am to be precise), that the Chief Executive Officers of Britain’s top 100 companies had already exceeded the median annual wage for a full-time worker in the UK.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Sick pay getting sicker
by New Worker correspondent
NOW THAT furlough is a thing of the past Britain’s bosses are launching an attack on sick pay. One of the pioneers in this filed is IKEA, the Swedish company which makes billions through the brilliant business model of selling people bits of wood that they take home to make themselves some furniture.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Housing News
by New Worker correspondent
IN THE north London borough of Camden the council Planning Inspector has shown some backbone in rejecting a developer’s claim that it would face a £70 million deficit if it were not allowed to abandon its pledge to include 36 “affordable housing” units in a 23-storey development.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
AS IS her regular custom, Nicola Sturgeon has just announced that she is in favour of a second independence referendum in 2023. Her chosen pulpit was STV’s Scotland Tonight programme, when her precise words were: “I intend to do everything that is within my power to enable that referendum to happen before the end of 2023, and we will set out exactly what that means in terms of the date of the introduction of legislation when we’ve taken the detailed decisions around that.”
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Pub Wars
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
A century ago, voters in Dundee elected as one of the MPs one Edwin Scrymgeour, of the Scottish Prohibition Party, when they tired of having Winston Churchill as their MP. On election night his triumph was widely celebrated, particularly in many Dundee public houses, and not with lemonade.
Some 100 years later Dundee pubs are the battleground between a trendy pub chain MacMerry on one side, and their annoyed workers, with their union Unite, on the other.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
All our yesterdays…
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
The Black Lives Matter campaign and the furore around the acquittal of the Colston Four has now spilled over into the English National Trust (NT), following a report published last year that found connections between 93 of its historic places and colonialism and slavery.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
‘Mothers-In-Arms’ slam Blair’s knighthood
by Svetlana Ekimenko
FIVE WOMEN brought together by grief met in Coventry Cathedral on Saturday to each light a candle for their sons, killed in Afghanistan, and voice their fury over the bestowing of knighthood on the man they blame for their loss – Tony Blair.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
International News
Mass protests rock Chios
by our Balkan affairs correspondent
THE PEOPLE of the Greek island of Chios successfully blockaded the ports on the island this week to stop the secret disembarkation of heavy machinery intended for the construction of a new large permanent detention centre meant for refugees and immigrants. They proved, once again, that when the people put their trust in their own power they can prevent and thwart unpopular plans.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Plutocrats and other evils
by Guillermo Alvarado
MILLIONS of people around the world would like to erase 2021 from their memory – a year in which lives were lost, families and loved ones continued to be separated and the economy remained in the doldrums – with the exception of a small group of wealthy people.
It is truly amazing that at a time when we were all doing very poorly, not just for individuals but for countries, some 500 billionaires saw their fortunes grow to unprecedented levels, obscene compared with the widespread increase in poverty.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Three new Iranian satellites in space
by Tim Korso
IRAN LAUNCHED a rocket carrying three satellites into space last month, revealed Iranian Defence Ministry spokesman Ahmad Hosseini. According to him, a domestically developed Simorgh small orbital space launch rocket was used to send three research satellites to low Earth orbit at an altitude of 470 kilometres in the last week of December.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
UNESCO honours Syrian orchestra
Syria Times
by Basma Qaddour
THE UNITED NATIONS Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has honoured the Syrian Qanun Orchestra Rojenda (Syrian Zither Orchestra) for its active participation in the World Music Conference (WMC), which was held in Birmingham last month.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Features
Russia challenges NATO’s threats
by Sara Flounders
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin at his End of the Year Press Conference on 23rd December 2021 told 500 domestic and international journalists: “We have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the US border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?”
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
America’s secret talks with Nazis
by Ilya Tsukanov
ALLEN DULLES, the US diplomat, spymaster and 1950s CIA director, conducted secret negotiations with Waffen-SS general Karl Wolf in the spring of 1945 aimed at reaching a separate peace between Nazi Germany and the Western allies. Soviet intelligence found out about the talks, and the incident led to a cooling of trust between the USA and the USSR.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
