Issues

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Issue - 1833
Dated - 11 Jan 2003
Balloting over a crap situation

MEAN BOSSES at a meat factory in Kirkconnell, Dumfriesshire, are docking their workers £1,000 a week for the time they spend in the toilet. Around 200 staff at the Brown Brothers' factory have been issued with smart cards which deduct their pay for the time they're away from the factory floor. "We have to go through a turnstile to the toilet," said one angry worker.

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In this issue

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Balloting over a crap situation

MEAN BOSSES at a meat factory in Kirkconnell, Dumfriesshire, are docking their workers £1,000 a week for the time they spend in the toilet. Around 200 staff at the Brown Brothers' factory have been issued with smart cards which deduct their pay for the time they're away from the factory floor. "We have to go through a turnstile to the toilet," said one angry worker.
11 January 2003
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International

US faces backlash over threat of war

THE US has been caught out banging the war drum over North Korea. That threat has provoked such a strong public reaction that the governments of South Korea and Japan, both US allies, have distanced themselves from George Bush. The division of the Korean peninsula into two states is a relic of the Cold War. The US backed the South, while China and Russia at different times supported the North.
11 January 2003
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International

Prisoners in revolt

A POLITICAL explosion reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall is shaking Cyprus. It has the potential to overcome the tragic division of the island's people along ethnic lines-Turks in a state in the north, Greeks in the south. It could also challenge Greece and Turkey, which, along with former colonial power Britain, have fostered those divisions.
11 January 2003
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International

Police gun down poor protesters

THE CARACAS city police shot dead Oscar Gomez and Jairo Moran on Friday of last week. Their "crime" was to demonstrate in support of the elected government against an upper middle class mob trying to besiege the Venezuelan capital's military barracks.
11 January 2003
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Anger grows at low pay Agenda

THE PRESS has suddenly picked up that Tony Blair is going to get a rough ride trying to push his "modernisation" proposals through the health service. The Guardian ran a front page story on New Year's Eve headlined "Pay Rebuff Threatens NHS Reform". It reported the growing opposition to the government's proposed new pay package for health workers, Agenda for Change.
11 January 2003
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Refugees

OVER 60 people held a soup kitchen protest last Saturday outside the flats Blair has bought his son Euan in Bristol. It was organised by the Bristol Defend Asylum Seekers Campaign to highlight government policies which will leave refugees on the streets
11 January 2003
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Firefighters

TALKS BETWEEN the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), local employers and ACAS were due to begin this week. The FBU has called two 48- hour strikes for 28 January and 1 February.
11 January 2003
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Socialist Alliance

FIREFIGHTER Steve Cracknell is standing for the Socialist Alliance in a council by-election taking place in Haringey, north London, on Thursday 23 January. Steve is the branch secretary of Hornsey fire station which is in the borough.
11 January 2003
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Obituaries

Jim Higgins

A MEMORIAL meeting to celebrate the life of Jim Higgins, the former national secretary of the International Socialists, will take place on Saturday 18 January at 2.30pm. The meeting will be held at Caxton House, 129 St John's Way, London (Archway tube). Speakers will include John Palmer and Roger Protz.
11 January 2003
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Obituaries

Joe Strummer: the sounds of an urban revolution

"What the fuck do you want?" Those were Joe Strummer's first words to me, backstage at London's ICA in the winter of 1976. I'd been photographing the gig for the New Musical Express, a revelation of the burgeoning punk scene. Born John Mellor in 1952, Joe Strummer, son of a British diplomat, boarding school, art college, cartoonist, artist, busker, musician, lived for a while in Newport.
11 January 2003
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‘We won’t stay quiet. We demand justice’

THE MURDER of an Asian taxi driver in Oldham led to an anti-racist demonstration last Saturday through the town centre. Israr Hussain was stabbed to death after picking up a fare two weeks ago. A white man is wanted for questioning. The police have finally logged it as a "racist incident".
11 January 2003
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Anti-Nazi

AROUND 30 people joined the Anti Nazi League leafleting campaign in the Mixenden ward in Halifax last Sunday and they received a good response. The BNP Nazis are standing a candidate in a council by-election on Thursday 23 January. Some residents said our leaflets were "brilliant" and offered to get some copied for friends and colleagues. Some said they were shocked and frightened when BNP materials came through their doors.
11 January 2003