National News
Trust in politicians hits spectacular low
by Mark Blacklock, Global Times
Nobody who has watched British civic life in recent years will have been in the least bit surprised that a recent study by the country’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has found only 12 per cent of the public trust their politicians, a spectacular low. Why is that?
Well, first of all, people feel increasingly alienated from those who are supposed to have been elected to represent their interests. Worse, they feel unable to influence the heedless parliamentary apparatus which seems to be being used to serving the politicians more than it serves the people
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Same Thing With a Kilt On
by New Worker correspondent
North of the border uncivil war has broken out between the SNP Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) with latter body formally announced it was “In dispute” with the Government.
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Pay Battles Ahead
by New Worker correspondent
Last week the three main local government unions, GMB, Unison and Unite, who between them represent about 1.4 million workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, submitted their annual pay claim. This is for all council employees to receive a wage rise of £3,000 or 10 per cent, whichever is higher. This will go some way towards reversing the fact that local government wages have fallen by 25 per cent in real terms since 2010.
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Stirring Up Apathy
by New Worker correspondent
Election fever barely extends beyond the union gravy train these days with candidates who are barely known beyond the cognoscenti who run the factions that prop up the full-time bureaucrats and the time-servers on the NECs.
Few bothered to vote in shopworkers’ union USDAW national elections. Turnout ranged from 3.5 to 4.6 per cent in the five regions which were contested. In two others. North Eastern and Scotland, the turnout was zero as they were uncontested.
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Boycott Israel!
by New Worker correspondent
Around 120 people turned out despite the cold, wind and rain last Saturday in Camden, north London, in solidarity with the people of Gaza and all Palestinians.
This was just one of dozens of local protests across Britain with the focus on Barclays Bank as a major financial supporter of the Zionist state
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Remembering the past in Gloucester
by New Worker correspondent
Last month the Chinese Embassy held a special reception in Gloucester for the families of a war-time tragedy in the Chinese seas and to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
On 1st October 1942, an American submarine sank a Japanese troopship off Shanghai. Some 700 Japanese soldiers scrambled to safety when the Lisbon Maru went down
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
“Fighting like rats in a sack” was how Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Dame Jackie Baillie described the SNP’s latest bout of internal warfare which was sparked off by SNP Deputy Leader Keith Brown (an MSP now without Cabinet office) saying that SNP should think about withdrawing from Westminster in the something akin to what Sinn Féin have done for over a hundred years. This was promptly slapped down by the First Minister, Angus Robertson, the former Westminster leader, and Stephen Flynn, the present Westminster leader, although the Finance Minister, Shona Robison was more ambiguous, perhaps because she had not read the newspapers that morning.
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International News
A better world for all
by María Josefina Arce, Radio Havana Cuba
In 1947, Prague, the capital of the then Czechoslovak Republic, was the scene of the First World Festival of Youth and Students, an event that over time has become a space for the defence of peace and in favour of a better world for all.
For 77 years this meeting has promoted solidarity, friendship between peoples and an exchange between young people from all over the world who oppose all forms of domination and exploitation
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Nuland goes: hard times ahead for Zelensky
by Ekaterina Blinova , Sputnik
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that Victoria Nuland , a senior American diplomat known for her ardent support of the Kiev regime, has decided to step down in coming weeks. A career diplomat, John R Bass, was picked as her temporary replacement, while the American media believes that Team Biden is likely to tap current US ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith to fill Nuland’s shoes in the near future
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Features
Yemen: Responding to Gaza
by Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein , The author is a former Director of International Relations of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ambassador to Nicaragua
The transnational media have spread the idea that the Houthis act under the influence of the government of Iran. Neither Iran nor the Houthis have denied belonging to an axis of resistance to imperialism, colonialism and Zionism, an axis that also incorporates political forces from Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain and Palestine itself. Simplifying the equation to a relationship of subordination however, is still superficial and banal, given the Yemeni people’s own history of struggle.
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Clara Zetkin and International Women’s Day
Workers World (USA)
“She who is a Communist belongs as a member to the Party, just as he who is a Communist. They have the same rights and duties. There can be no difference of opinion on that score.” - Lenin
German Marxist Clara Zetkin was a contemporary of Lenin. She had organized among women workers and published a socialist women’s newspaper titled Die Gleichheit (Equality) for 25 years (1892–1917). In 1910 at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference, Zetkin and others proposed that an International Working Women’s Day should be held annually; it passed unanimously.
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People’s China and the world we want
by Andy Brooks
New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks took part in a seminar on China’s diplomacy and building a community with a shared future for humanity at the Chinese embassy in London in February. This is his contribution to the discussion.
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