"On the knocker" for Labour's Abbas for Mayor: Uniting the East End

Last night I went out door knocking for Labour in Limehouse ward, Tower Hamlets.  The team was led by local Labour Councillor, David Edgar.

There was a number of Labour teams out canvassing in various parts of Tower Hamlets that night. 

One local resident helping out was a fellow UNISON Housing officer who worked in Haringey.

There were lots of low rise blocks with no lifts, so plenty of healthy exercise going up and down stairwells.  Once again I thought why pay for an expensive gym to get fit when you can go canvassing for Labour for free! - perhaps the Party ought to charge?

I felt we had a really good response on the door step.  People wanted a real Labour Mayor to work with real Labour Councillors and real Labour MP's to fight the impending Tsunami of CONDEM slash and burn cuts about to engulf the borough. 

During the canvass I asked David why politics in Tower Hamlets is so, so boring, why nothing ever happens in the borough, why everything is so unexciting, drab and predictable.  David immediately replied that it is because everyone in the local Party loves each other, are always in total agreement and have never a bad word to say about each other.

:)

(campaign office is at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9RA - 3 mins from Bethnal Green tube and is open for canvassing and leafleting from 10am-6.30pm every day until the election.  Or you can ring 0207 729 6682 or email abbas4mayor@gmail.com for further details).

“No Dividend Appropriation without Representation”

You don’t have to be raving loony left to get out of your tree at this recent report by the TUC “Pension Watch”.

They have found by examining the published accounts that the average top 100 directors of UK companies will look forward to a pension of £201,700 a year from pension pots that average £3 million each.

This is annual pensions, not salary.

The real issue is not just the size of these payments in itself (although many would disagree) to me the issue is that this is a stonking 25 times the average workplace pension that ordinary workers receive (£8,100 v. £201,700).

Not only that, while many large firms decide that they cannot “afford” to pay what is called “Defined Benefit” (or DB - pensions to its ordinary workers which are much less riskier and much fairer than the new “Defined Contribution” or DC), 76% of director schemes are still on safer “Defined Benefit” (DB)!

The shame gets even worse. Where you have directors on DC schemes, the top directors receive average pension contributions equivalent to 21% of their salaries, while the average for ordinary workers is only 6.5%. This unfairness is difficult (for me anyway) to really get your head around but remember that not only are the directors already paid far more than their average employees but the multiple that their pension contributions are paid is also far, far higher (unlike income tax?)

Finally, while we find that nearly all public and private pensions schemes for ordinary mortals now have a retirement age of 65, the majority of schemes allow directors to retire at 60!

This stinks! I can accept that there will always be in a capitalist society significant differentials in wages and benefits. But the scale of these differentials in pensions is just wrong and surely destructive. Do we really want to live in such a society where there is such blatant unfairness? Surely even those who do not believe in social justice will realise the drip, drip damage that such inequality will result in?

The irony is of course that the ordinary workers who get such a raw deal when compared to their directors are actually the real “owners” of these companies via their pensions and insurance policies. If these owners were able to exercise their rights of ownership would such abuses continue?

So do we need to dress up as native Indians, invade the London Stock exchange and then throw annual reports into Limehouse harbour under the call for “No Dividend Appropriation without Representation”?

Fighting the Good Fight in Shadwell – Home of diss-Respect

Went off today with Newham Labour Party comrades to help out in the Shadwell By-Election, Tower Hamlets. One of the Respect Councillors for the ward resigned suddenly a few weeks ago claiming that Respect was “bickering, immature, self serving and militant”. No surprise there then. See action photo of Labour Party activists outside Limehouse DLR station planning campaign activities (middle Denise Jones the current leader of the Council, right is the Candiate, former Labour leader of Council, Michael Keith ).

It was an interesting afternoon. At first we tried to canvass the wealthy blocks near the Limehouse basin. It was really difficult to get in and even once in, many residents were either out or not registered. One particularly nasty Tory supporter threw a right wobbler about us daring to “canvass” his private block and was running around trying to get the site security to get us arrested! I tried to point out that we had been invited in by a resident, but he clearly was off his head. He wasn’t impressed when I then asked him if I could put him down as a Labour "possible". Nearly everyone else we called upon were perfectly okay and polite even if they did not support Labour.

Later we went to more traditional Tower Hamlets estates. See left with Newham Councillor James Butler.
We even met up with the opposition in the form of former Labour councillor and advisor to Ken Livingston turned Bethnal Green and Bow, Respect Parliamentary candidate hopeful Kumar Murshid (big mate of Gorgeous George). Busy like us trying to infiltrate the Shadwell yuppie blocks.

It was quite uneventful, compared to previous recent campaigns; it seems that the gangs of Respect thugs intimidating opposition canvassers were not about. I hear that the price of a wrap is pretty low at the moment, so they must have their work cut out elsewhere.

There was no sign of any Tory or Lib Dem leaflets or canvassers?

Lovely dramatic Shadwell picture.