Revenue & Customs Trade Union statement on HMRC changes

Today the announcement was made to staff in HMRC at 1100, one that had long been telegraphed by the BOF events (perversely the Daily Telegraph had an article this morning detailing the announcement -http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11989681/HMRC-to-merge-170-offices-into-13-hubs-as-part-of-major-overhaul.html ), that we are closing all locations and moving to new regional offices – 170 to 13 (or 14 if you look at the commercial tender that is out there).

The RCTU officers discovered that shelved plans from 2008/9 had been resurrected in 2013 to move to perhaps a dozen locations and fought hard to explain why the issues and concerns we raised in 2008/9 – which with other actions to halt such an extreme move - remained valid and supported by empirical evidence since then from trails and projects many of which we initiated – that we required a network of modern offices across the UK, covering the UK, and with proper consultation we could have modern, well paid, flexible staff to meet all compliance activity. Of course this needs structural change in senior management commands and less senior management posts.

So now we are here.

• The fiscal business case is unproven.
• The compliance business case is unproven.
• The IT delivery is, and we quote a senior leader, “wishful thinking”.
• The impact on staff morale is incalculable but certainly devastating and promotes massive disengagement.

We have repeatedly said on this website said this strategy is flawed and the need to make an alternative case is paramount. We want to discuss this directly with HMRC senior leaders and have written to the employer on that basis.

We have the business case that needs to be heard. It is the staff’s case from their experience and their day to day reality of their working life in HMRC.
The change in the original plans of 2013 with all offices closed by 2020 in a rolling programme from 2016 onwards is interesting - as are the press leaks – we believe we know why and it concerns us greatly.

RCTU General Secretary Margi Rathbone said:

 “While we welcome more time to discuss the detail of these proposals there remain concerns from our members about the overall strategy. Is it the right strategy for the UK? HMRC is basing the proposals, to a degree, on a future business models that do not exist as yet and have not, of course, been tested. It will also cause issues with customer service delivery with urban location rationalisation and the associated staff disruption. It does not take into account what our members know is the actual reality in their everyday working lives. The new estate plans makes little sense to our members and the employer is once again failing to listen to their staff.”

You can join the RCTU via their website: rctunion.org.uk

Human Rights Court rules against Dieudonne

The vicious anti-Semite Dieudone M'bala M'bala who masquerades as a comedian has lost his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) who have ruled that anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are not "free expression"

The Belfast Telegraph reports:

Dieudonne, as the comic is known, ended a December 2008 show by inviting a prominent Holocaust denier on stage, then having an actor dressed to resemble a concentration camp victim offer him a prize.

He was convicted by a French court in October 2009 of hate crime charges and fined 10,000 euros (£7,000). He lost repeated appeals, until finally bringing it before the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.

The court noted Dieudonne's stated desire to stage "the biggest anti-Semitic meeting since the last World War" and ruled on Tuesday that the show was not a show but the expression of an ideology.

In other words a political rally. One designed to promote hate against Jews.



This is but a small victory in the fight against the rise of anti-Semitism both in France and across Europe promoted by Islamists, "anti-imperialists" and sections of the so-called left particularly in the UK. Most will claim they are simply "anti-Zionist" whist allying themselves with genocidal terrorist groups such as Hamas in the name of "solidarity".

It is too easy to forget that fascism did not just begin on the right. Mussolini was originally a socialist whose loss to the movement was mourned by Lenin. Mosley came out of the Labour Party and the full name of the Nazi's was the National Socialist Workers Party.

The message to the world must be two words.

Never again.

Musical Interlude: Garbage

The free London based newspaper The Metro ran a review of a recent Garbage concert in today's edition. Unfortunately I left it in the canteen but the reviewer did inspire me to play a couple of their albums this evening, so I thought I'd share a quick tune with you.



This song Shut You Mouth is from their third album beautifulgarbage



Official website: www.garbage.com

A faux protest at expulsion by the Alliance for Workers Liberty

Back in 1990 a group found to be around the newspaper Socialist Organiser was proscribed by the Labour Party on the ground that it was just like the Militant Tendency, a distinct and separate organisation to the Labour Party. Yes it was a lot smaller, barely over 100 people but that's not the point.

Fast forward to today and the group still exists but as is the way for Trotskyist organisations they have changed the name of their newspaper and the party behind it. Solidarity is the paper of the Alliance for Workers Liberty. They have some pretty interesting (and sometimes quite sane) views on politics having come out firmly against Islamism and anti-Semitism which is frankly a breath of fresh air on the far left.



Contrast that to the other vile groupscules on the far left such as Counterfire (the group behind the mis-named Stop the War Campaign) and Socialist Action (Trots turned Stalinists) who see Zionism in everything and seek the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East, which also happens to be the only Jewish state in the world.

For most of the far-left the destruction of "Imperialism" (unless it's Russian or Chinese) is THE priority regardless of the consequences. Organisations like Counterfire cow-tow to Putin's growing dictatorship, back the murderous President Assad of Syria, the genocidal maniacs of Hamas and Hezbollah work for the clerical-fascist Iranian run "Press TV". The list is endless but similar to the nonsense espoused by Jeremy Corbyn.

Here the AWL run into a problem. Like the rest of the far-left they have jumped on the Corbyn bandwagon despite their rather obvious differences with the man himself on these major issues. They have "wound down" their electoral front" with the Electoral Commission so they can enter "en-mass" (if a hundred or so members can be described as such) the Labour Party.

Hence their current problem.

They are actively disliked by the rest of the left for their "social imperialism" (whatever the hell tht's supposed to mean. The far left are not renowned for their use of plain English) and are running into trouble. Four of the (cough) members have been excluded/expelled from the Labour Party for being members of the AWL.

Like Militant it's not supposed to exist and we are all, laughably supposed to believe they are just a publishers of a newspaper.

No one believes that. The even smaller Workers Power group has embarked on a similar strategy with it's "Red Flag" project.

Of all the left papers Solidarity is an interesting read but then so was the Weekly Worker before it became obsessed with the minutiae of the goings on in the now failed Left Unity party set up by film director Ken Loach.

Still I digress.

The point is this small group of sometimes quite shouty individuals are a separate party and there is no way round it. Not that this stops them from protesting.

A statement calling for an end to the expulsions/witch hunt etc has been posted on line by "Red Labour" (No idea either before you ask).

Statement by Red Labour on the recent expulsion of some of our Labour Party comrades:

In the course of a rather grotesquely titled 'operation ice-pick' (ice pick being the murder weapon used on Trotsky by an agent of Stalin) a number of long-standing party members have been expelled despite being energetic Labour supporters for all recent elections.
The charge against them is that they are suspected of being members of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL)
- or to “have been” associated with AWL in the past
- or just to be suspected of having contributed
- or circulated Solidarity (the weekly paper linked to the AWL)
- or having attended AWL public events
- or selling or writing for its paper 'Solidarity'.
Some have received letters saying only that they have been expelled for being members of "political groups other than official Labour groups", a criterion drawn from the rules but so vague that if taken literally it could be a mandate for expelling probably the majority of Labour's members. 

Read the rest here: http://www.workersliberty.org/node/25806

A disingenuous statement. CND and Greenpeace are "single issue" pressure groups.  The AWL is a political party no matter how you pretend otherwise. So is Socialist Action (Ken Livingstones aides in County Hall), Workers Power and Left Unity despite Ken Loaches protests.

A faux outrage. No other way to put it.

Stop the War and Diane Abbot's hypocrisy knows no bounds

The appearance of "comrade" Abbot on TV yesterday (see post below) exposed the nature of the anti-imperialist left and in has led to the Stop the War Coalition crying "foul" because they finally got caught out. The

The last few days have seen a series of venomous or abusive attacks on Stop the War in The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the BBC. The worst of these, in the sense of being the most mendacious, was on Andrew Neil’s BBC Daily Politics show.

Neil used the organised disruption of Stop the War’s otherwise successful meeting in parliament on November 2, which brought together MPs from nearly all parties in opposition to bombing Syria, as a pretext to smear StWC..

Successful meeting? Who are they trying to kid. We all saw protests from SYRIANS about not only the politics of the event but the way it was handled. Banned from speaking, the Syrians did indeed protest in much the same way that Lyndsey German has done in the past when in the Socialist Workers Party. These anti-imperialist just were not prepared to listen to the actual people who have fled not ISIS in the main but the barrel bombs of the Syrian air force.

Assad is responsible for seven times the number of deaths ISIS is. Not that the comrades care. Where were the Stop the War demonstrations outside the Syrian Embassy.

Nowhere.

The StWC also published articles supporting Russian intervention which included Russian bombing but have half heartedly tried to back track as Russian bombs cause as much (if not more) collateral (civilian deaths) damage than the allies.

Hypocrites.

All the comrades had to do was listen. Now it's all a witch-hunt now their true face has been exposed.

They do have some supporters. The vile John Wight over at Socialist Unity writes:

...STW find themselves under attack from voices accusing it of failing to take a stand against Assad and the Syrian government. A recent STW public meeting on Syria, held in the House of Commons, was loudly interrupted from the floor by Syrians opposed to Assad, and by Peter Tatchell, in what Stop the War describes on its website as an “organised disruption”. Afterwards, Tatchell shared his account of the experience on social media, accusing STW of refusing to allow those Syrians the right to speak, a claim the organisers of the meeting deny, before going on to denounce the organisation in withering terms.

Unlike the StWC Commissar Wight has always been openly pro-Assad and considers that Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell:

...on the other hand is a classic example of the Western liberal whose conception of the world is akin to that of a child let loose with crayons on a blank sheet of paper, allowing said crayons to go wherever they please with no thought of the mess being made or lack of coherence being wrought.

Worse, he and his co-thinkers continue their slavish attachment to the wondrous virtues of ‘humanitarian intervention’..

Right.....

Right-wing to the core methinks. 

The Stop the War cronies and John Wight of Socialist Unity are not progressive at all. Not in any shape or form.

Neither it would seem is Diane Abbot the "socialist" MP who according to The Sunday Times today has been charging up to £5,000 a time for "speaking fees". Not sure who would really want to listen to her but now it's news she's apparently withdrawn from the agency that provides speakers.

It seems that so many of today's "wadicals" are not so radical after all.

No wonder students want to hide in safe spaces....

Diane Abbotts duplicity about a Stop The War / Syria debate

The duplicity of Diane Abbot and the Stop the War Coalitions is made obvious in this clip from the Daily politics show.

Apologists for dictators.

Workers Power reconstitute themselves as "Red Flag"

The rite of passage into the Labour Party by Trotskyist groups usually does necessarily warrant a name change as they might be a wee to obvious selling their old rag and describing themselves as supporters of an organisation that was and still is a separate and distinct organisation.

Worker Power are the latest group to try these wheeze and have reconstituted themselves inside Labour as the "Red Flag", "Labour's revolutionary socialist voice". According to their new website:

Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory opens a new period in British politics. A new mass socialist movement is born, bringing hundreds of thousands into political life. This movement can transform Labour and transform Britain, as long as it adopts consistent socialist policies and fights for a thoroughgoing socialist transformation of society.

Red Flag is a revolutionary socialist initiative campaigning in the Labour Party, in the trade unions and among young people for:.....(amongst other things)

a social revolution, a Socialist Republic of Britain and a socialist world.

No mention of the Fifth International though...oh wait, the games mentioned in their "International" Journal:

........... with the recent experience of the Syriza left government in Greece and its miserable capitulation in mind, it is vital that revolutionaries in the Labour Party organise and fight for their ideas openly so that the members are prepared for the tremendous crisis that will develop if the Labour Party, under Corbyn’s policies, looks as if it will win the next general election. They will have to develop a “straight talking” debate on the question posed by Rosa Luxemburg over a century ago, Reform or Revolution?

Hardly openly if they've changed their name. Devious entryist tactics as previously practised by Militant and Socialist Organiser.

Expect a new newspaper soon.

Oh and joining them will be part of the Socialist Party's now obviously falling apart Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. The Independent Socialist Network is also entering the Labour Party. The ISN is not to be confused with the International Socialist Network who fell apart over a row about "race play" and is now clearly defunct.

So many competing groups all vying for the leadership of the working class. So much for Corbyn's "new politics". Sounds like the same old crap to this observer.