So much has been written and said about Nelson Mandela today that rather than try to duplicate any tributes, I'd post this video of the most successful political protest song of all time!
A song for a man that inspired so many.
Friday, 6 December 2013
Thursday, 5 December 2013
PCS undermines it's own members
The decision of the Government to introduce a sanctions regime for those it deems are not seeking employment has caused some controversy which the General Secretary of the PCS union, Mark Serwotka took a decision to respond to. A press release states
Today’s sanctions statistics show a shocking rise in the numbers being penalised, resulting in severe and dehumanising hardship for claimants and their families. The new sanctions regime damages the relationship between Jobcentre advisers and claimants, and is entirely counterproductive in helping people to find work.
I responded as a PCS Branch Secretary to Serwotka by reminding him that:
It's actually quite easy to avoid being sanctioned. All a claimant has to do is:
At the same time the Socialist Party newspaper reported a violent incident effecting PCS members in Lincoln Job Centre. One of their members, Nick Parker says:
"Front-line job centre staff do a vital job to provide a helping hand to benefit claimants who find themselves out of a job to get them back on their feet and into work. Staff are doing this on deteriorating rates of pay and with increasing workloads. They have a right to be able to go about their daily working lives without the threat of being attacked or abused by a small minority of people whom they serve.
That's the key, a "small minority". It always has been.
Yet the left remains hostile to PCS members as this weeks Weekly Worker illustrates. One correspondent "Jo Russell" muses:
Mark Serwotka makes the point that “The government’s perverse and punitive approach is a collective punishment on the unemployed and disabled.” The PCS, then, is fully aware of the role of its members in delivering this barbaric system.
This is then compounded by the cry of "scabs" by Mark Wood on the same page:
whilst PCS members continue to administer programmes which are hitting the unemployed and the sick, it is like asking a scab to lead a strike.
PCS members are Civil Servants who have a clear (and constitutional) role to implement Government policies regardless of their origin. The UK remains a democracy and Governments change. Civil servants have a duty whilst conducting their duties to be political neutral.
PCS is a trade union that exists to represent it's members and is an insurance policy for those who pay subscriptions. It is not (and shouldn't be) a political party though is fast turning into one under Serwotka and his useless menagerie of Trotskyist supporters.
The leadership of PCS must defend their members first and foremost.
Too often they forget this.
PCS further notes that DWP staff have been set ‘expectations’ about the number of sanctions they should issue, despite ministerial denials that there are targets.
Staff are required to do this under threat of disciplinary action through poor performance procedures if they are not seen to be meeting the ‘expectations’ set by DWP management.
Mark Serwotka then adds:Today’s sanctions statistics show a shocking rise in the numbers being penalised, resulting in severe and dehumanising hardship for claimants and their families. The new sanctions regime damages the relationship between Jobcentre advisers and claimants, and is entirely counterproductive in helping people to find work.
I responded as a PCS Branch Secretary to Serwotka by reminding him that:
It's actually quite easy to avoid being sanctioned. All a claimant has to do is:
· Turn up on time to appointments
· Attend Appointments
· Produce evidence of Job search (which at the moment is just 6 examples on an ES4JP per fortnight)
· Attend training courses/interviews as arranged by the Job centre staff.
Most people do that, but there are a large number of individuals who are constantly late, fail to turn up for appointments and make no effort at all not just to look for work but to comply with the very simple requirements that keep their benefit in payment.
It's not rocket science and we as a union have to remember the extra work this involves on the part of our members.
"Front-line job centre staff do a vital job to provide a helping hand to benefit claimants who find themselves out of a job to get them back on their feet and into work. Staff are doing this on deteriorating rates of pay and with increasing workloads. They have a right to be able to go about their daily working lives without the threat of being attacked or abused by a small minority of people whom they serve.
That's the key, a "small minority". It always has been.
Yet the left remains hostile to PCS members as this weeks Weekly Worker illustrates. One correspondent "Jo Russell" muses:
Mark Serwotka makes the point that “The government’s perverse and punitive approach is a collective punishment on the unemployed and disabled.” The PCS, then, is fully aware of the role of its members in delivering this barbaric system.
This is then compounded by the cry of "scabs" by Mark Wood on the same page:
whilst PCS members continue to administer programmes which are hitting the unemployed and the sick, it is like asking a scab to lead a strike.
PCS members are Civil Servants who have a clear (and constitutional) role to implement Government policies regardless of their origin. The UK remains a democracy and Governments change. Civil servants have a duty whilst conducting their duties to be political neutral.
PCS is a trade union that exists to represent it's members and is an insurance policy for those who pay subscriptions. It is not (and shouldn't be) a political party though is fast turning into one under Serwotka and his useless menagerie of Trotskyist supporters.
The leadership of PCS must defend their members first and foremost.
Too often they forget this.
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
Wednesday night break from politics
It's been one of those days to today, I hope you had a better one than I did! So here to give us all a quick break from politics is a wonderful little song from 1968 by two of my favourite stars, Peter Sellers and the absolutely gorgeous Sophia Loren.
Just...enjoy!
Just...enjoy!
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
The right to strike is a human right
by Eric Lee LabourStart
South Korea's railway workers are about to launch a strike -- but based on their experience last time around, they're worried.
Do these online campaigns make a difference? Yes they do -- and to prove it, we published a short book a few months ago summarizing some of the victories we've had with LabourStart campaigns over the last few years. Order your copy (or copies -- they make great holiday gifts for the trade unionists in your life) here:
South Korea's railway workers are about to launch a strike -- but based on their experience last time around, they're worried.
Their anti-union government used tactics such as criminal charges, imprisonments, suits for damages, dismissals and other disciplinary actions in retaliation against a similar strike in 2009.
The union has decided to ask for worldwide support for their campaign demanding the legal right to strike this time around and I'm writing to ask you to sign up to back them:
Their campaign is being supported by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), which is calling for a day of action on 10 December to support the Korean railway workers. (More details to come on their website.)
Do these online campaigns make a difference? Yes they do -- and to prove it, we published a short book a few months ago summarizing some of the victories we've had with LabourStart campaigns over the last few years. Order your copy (or copies -- they make great holiday gifts for the trade unionists in your life) here:Monday, 2 December 2013
Don't abandon Tibet: send a message to David Cameron
One of the great injustices of the world is the Chinese occupation of Tibet since 1950. The Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting China today. The Guardian reports:
Li said Britain and China were indispensable and equal partners, noting the prime minister's recent approach to Beijing by acknowledging the territorial integrity of China – diplomatic code for accepting Beijing's rule over Tibet.
Unacceptable!
The Tibetan people have a right of national self determination. Whilst the usual crowds of protesters ignore the very real genocide being perpetrated on Tibet, some are taking action!
The Free Tibet campaign issued the following statement:
New poll reveals strong support for Tibet as UK leader prepares to visit China.
Around seven in every ten UK adults thinks that human rights in Tibet is at least as important as trade with China, according to a new survey.
The results come as UK Prime Minster David Cameron prepares for his first visit to China.
Only 10% of those questioned in the ICM poll, commissioned by Free Tibet, thought it would be wrong for Mr Cameron to raise the issue of Tibet during his state visit from 2-4 December.
Dalai Lama meeting
Relations between the UK and China have been strained since Mr Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2012. China responded angrily to the meeting and has subsequently claimed that a British admission of “mishandling” the issue of Tibet led to a thawing in the relationship and paved the way for trade deals between the two countries.
However this latest poll shows that Mr Cameron was doing exactly what the British people want him to do when he met with the Dalai Lama.
It also shows that UK Chancellor, George Osborne, was hopelessly out of step with public opinion when he refused to be drawn on the subject of human rights when he was in China last month.
Send a message to David Cameron, address at the end of this short video:
Go to http://www.freetibet.org/ for more information
Sunday, 1 December 2013
PCS is a broken union
For the past decade or more since Mark Serwotka became General Secretary of PCS, the union has been dragged to the political fringe to the point whereby it is isolated, mostly ineffective and ignored. Yes there have been some local and Departmental "wins" but on a national scale the decline of PCS is clear to all it's members that it is now in (probably terminal) decline.
Along with Serwotka PCS has been dominated by an alliance of the far-left, itself in the thrall of the Socialist Party along with (until fairly recently) the Socialist Workers Party. Throw in a couple of old Stalinists and some lefty Labour Party types and you get the general picture. In an alliance with another Labour "left" group, the PCS Democrats around Ian Albert and the now thankfully departed Hugh Lanning they have taken the PCS firmly into the political sphere, abandoning almost all pretence of being a trade union.
The decision of the union to "stand and support candidates in the General Election" along with many leading figures of PCS including PCS President Janice Godrich, Assistant General Secretary Chris Baugh and Vice President John McInally taking a lead role in in the Trade Union & Socialist Coalition has forced the union into a corner. The General Secretary himself tours the far-left promoting his wares and was for a long time close to, but not a member of the SWP has made it plain that he favours the creation of a new far-left party.
Simultaneously PCS has headed to industrial destruction through promoting unsustainable strike campaigns (for which support has clearly declined) and the unions Socialist Party leaders have been at the forefront of calling for a 24 hour general strike which although has fallen on deaf ears has not helped restore any confidence amongst the members. Nor has it helped with our relationships with other unions.
The banal decision of Mark Serwotka to call for a strike in the UKBA just before the Olympics triggered the inevitable response from the anti-trade union Minister Francis Maude. Although the strike never went ahead the ill thought out remarks by the "dim leader" led to the huge attacks on facility time in the civil service and local government. The job of reps simply got harder.
For those of you on my PCS e-mail lists none of this criticism is new and I will continue to oppose the leadership's ridiculous political grandstanding but there is one change that I have already made in the world of factional politics that exists in PCS.
Last week I resigned as National Secretary of the (politically mainstream) 4themembers group in PCS, a role I have held for the past six years. The group, which currently has four members on the PCS National Executive Committee is in the process of re-organising itself (under Andy Magee & Rob Bowers) but the time has come for me to take a "back bench" role.
This is because I am no longer convinced that PCS can be reformed, in fact it may already be too late to save it short of some kind of "mass revolt" against the current incumbents by members and reps which I also doubt will happen any time soon.
I will continue as Branch Secretary because I have & I will always do the best for my members, but so many have asked in recent months whether there is another union we can join, it does send a certain message to me at least.
Lots have gone already as in (almost) the entire membership in the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Others drift away as I write.
PCS is broken.
Those responsible are the far-left around Serwotka, the Socialist Party, the SWP and those that act as their bag carriers in PCS. And don't let them say otherwise.
Useless, the lot of them.
Musical interlude EXTRA: The 1962 Eurovision entry
One of the questions on last nights Pointless TV quiz show was to name British solo artists who entered the Eurovision Song Contest. Given the point of the game was to get one nobody knew, even my own guesses of Cliff Richard, Sandie Shaw and Lulu would have been no good,though Javine turned out to be a "pointless" answer and she was just a few years back!
The answer given by one contestant was Ronnie Caroll which not only turned out to be correct but was quite unknown it would seem. Determined to find out more off to You Tube I headed!
It turns out Ronnie entered two years in a row, 1962 and 63 being to the only British entrant to do so. The following song Ring-a-ding-girl was the 1962 entry.
He was previously married to the singer from the TV show which launched the career of David Frost, That Was The Week That Was, Millicent Martin.
There's a political angle to end this story on as Wikepedia helpfully tells us:
He contested Hampstead and Highgate in the 1997 UK General Election, and the Uxbridge by-election in July 1997.[4] In the 2005 British General Election, Carroll stood for the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party, in Belfast. He is close friends with the party leader, Rainbow George. It has been superseded by the Make Politicians History banner. In the same year, he released a comeback album, Back on Song.[1] He stood in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, 2008 as a candidate for Make Politicians History and received 29 votes despite announcing that he was trying to enter the record books by receiving no votes.[5]
The answer given by one contestant was Ronnie Caroll which not only turned out to be correct but was quite unknown it would seem. Determined to find out more off to You Tube I headed!
It turns out Ronnie entered two years in a row, 1962 and 63 being to the only British entrant to do so. The following song Ring-a-ding-girl was the 1962 entry.
He was previously married to the singer from the TV show which launched the career of David Frost, That Was The Week That Was, Millicent Martin.
There's a political angle to end this story on as Wikepedia helpfully tells us:
He contested Hampstead and Highgate in the 1997 UK General Election, and the Uxbridge by-election in July 1997.[4] In the 2005 British General Election, Carroll stood for the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party, in Belfast. He is close friends with the party leader, Rainbow George. It has been superseded by the Make Politicians History banner. In the same year, he released a comeback album, Back on Song.[1] He stood in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, 2008 as a candidate for Make Politicians History and received 29 votes despite announcing that he was trying to enter the record books by receiving no votes.[5]
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