Is Clarion the P&O of the Housing Association Sector?

Check out Clarion UNISON Facebook page

"Clarion is currently threatening to sack long serving and loyal staff to get rid of their pension promises. Unlike P&O's pathetic excuses there is no known financial reasons for these sackings.

UNISON believe that these dismissals are potentially unlawful and discriminative. Nevermind that they are disastrous for Clarion and its reputation. Who will trust Clarion in the future if they break their promises they made in the past?

Is this the tip of the iceberg and are all Clarion staff facing the threat of dismissal if they do not agree to determinantal changes to their terms and conditions?" 

Sunday Times on Suicide Bombers: "I don’t really mind if they don’t leave the country, so long as they blow themselves up – somewhere a decent distance from where the rest of us live. Tower Hamlets, for example"

I have just made my first ever complaint to the press regulator https://www.ipso.co.uk/complain/ about the article yesterday in The Sunday Times about suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Tower Hamlets. 

Not only I have worked in Tower Hamlets for 25 years and have lived next door in the even more diverse London borough of Newham for even longer. I can remember being woken up by the noise of the 1996 IRA bomb in Canary Wharf, which murdered two people and hurt over a 100, some permanently disabled and disfigured (it also wreaked the headquarters of my employers).

I also remember the Brick Lane nail bombing by a Nazi extremist in 1999, which injured 6 people.

Never mind all the residents in Tower Hamlets I have met who lived through the fear and destruction of the second world war Blitz.

Bombing in Tower Hamlets is not a laughing matter.

So this is what was said yesterday in the (paywall) Sunday Times article about suicide bombers, by their long time commentator, Rod Liddle. He said: “I don’t really mind if they don’t leave the country, so long as they blow themselves up – somewhere a decent distance from where the rest of us live. Tower Hamlets, for example.” (my emphasis)

Is blowing up a bomb in Tower Hamlets supposed to be a good thing or somehow inconsequential? So is he saying "normal people" the "rest of us" - don't live in Tower Hamlets? Only muslims and suicide bombers live there - so who cares?

This is not only clearly discriminative against all Muslims but will also only give succour to violent Nazi racists who make constant threats against the Borough. The Sunday Times may soon have blood on its hands.

Ironically, the ignorant Rod Liddle, does not seem to realise that if a bomb went off nowadays in Brick Lane, it would probably kill or maim non muslim tourists who are in search of a decent curry.

People say that the IPSO is a toothless tiger controlled by the industry. If this is not true then now is the time for it to act.

Hat tip Ejaz

Daily Mail caught out lying again & turning into your Dad

When I was growing up my father banned newspapers from our house. He said that they were all biased and we should get our news from the BBC TV at 9pm. He knew that the BBC (bless it) was not perfect but he was satisfied that they meant well and usually got their reporting right most of the time.

I disagreed and use to love reading newspapers. As a teenager I worked in a Newsagents and in the school holidays would try and read every paper in stock. I found it fascinating how different papers would report the same story. Over the years I have become more and more disenchanted with newspapers and have now pretty much stopped buying them.

The latest example of lies and smears published in the Daily Mail last week about Gordon Brown MP just beggars belief (see rare retraction above). You would have thought with the current phone hacking criminal trial and unease about the proposed press regulation charter they would have been just a little big careful about what they publish?

The broadsheets are better but not that much better.  Leaving aside the Sunday Times which I don't believe anything it says anymore. They all seem to be aimed at wealthy middle class elites who obsess over super expensive cars, Waitrose cooking ingredients and exotic holidays in the Seychelles. I exaggerate slightly to make my point and I do on occasions read something interesting and well written but I usually get bored reading them and end up throwing most of it away unread.

Provocative and opinionated stuff you can nowadays get very easily on the Internet. 

I will still read the local press and specialist weeklies but I find myself in yet another way, turning into a slightly updated version of my old Dad. I have decided not to buy daily or Sunday papers and rely on the BBC for my main news.  Now of course largely via their website and PC, tablet, laptop and smartphone.

Lies, Damned lies...and The Sunday Times

The TUC think tank website ToUCHstone rips apart the blatantly misleading and partisan rubbish put out by today’s The Sundays Times about public sector pay. While I don’t think any genuine progressive would expect fairness from Murdock’s Tory fanzine you would not think that a "serious" heavyweight broadsheet would resort to such laughable gibberish masquerading as serious analysis.

Since these outrageous porkies will not go away in the run up to the next election all of us who have some regard to the truth must rebut this stuff straight away.

Average public sector pay may be 7% more than in the public sector, but this is because there are more graduates and professionals in the public sector than the private sector. Since for example we expect all our doctors and teachers to be qualified graduates. People doing similar jobs (“Peers”) in the private and public sector are not being compared. Ironically the evidence as shown by TUC Nigel Stanley is that graduates and other qualified staff in the public sector are paid less. It is only the lower paid public sector workers such as cleaners and diner ladies that “benefit” when compared to the private sector. This is because many private sector jobs pay minimum wage, basic holiday pay, statutory only sickness pay and no pensions at all.

What is particularly laughable is the “reports” on page 12 about a Karen Moffat (aged 60 please note) who strangely is paid more while working as a manager in the NHS than in some undefined role in a supermarket canteen? Well I never! Or the Morpeth Jeweller who complains that he trains up workers “who then leave to get similar roles in the Council”. Who on earth besides Sunday Times journalists thinks that Northumberland Council runs a jewellers? The article also mentions a “victim of public sector golden age”. Bizarrely they think it is noteworthy that “Zoe Waas” who runs a cleaning company cannot get staff to only work less than 16 hours (at God knows what rotten pay and conditions) due to the public sector offering more hours and pay? So people should be barred from working more than 16 hours? What does she pay her staff? What rot and rubbish. Call this reporting?

I’ve just google “Morpeth Council jobs” and it came up with 3 vacancies via Northumberland Council, A cleaner on £6.30-6.47 per hour; A family placement support worker (day and support care for disabled and non-disabled kids) for £17,161 - £19,621 a year and a NHS Care Support worker at £13,233 per year. Yeah, what great money, what a “golden age” you must be enjoying on these pay rates.

I could go on and on but I will finish with this...

Why didn’t the Sunday Times just run a more honest feature on “why doesn’t the public sector pay poverty wages for working people just like the private sector?”

Or much better still “Minimum Wage for All - Sunday Times Journalists and Executives will set an example to the Nation”.

Update: UNISON Active joins in the fun and highlights the dodgy role of so called "Straight Statistics" in this sorry tale.

Go “walkabout” this Wednesday - National Inspection Day 24 October

We have got ourselves in a right mess over health & safety in this country. The right wing dismiss practically all safety concerns as just “unnecessary nanny state meddling”. If people die at work then that is just bad luck. These things “happen”.

Likewise, there are also people in our great trade union movement, who consider health & safety not to be a “proper” union issue. Yes, they will use it to recruit and wind members up but… “What! work with the bosses? Fill out their forms? Write reports? How will this further the revolution?”

Even pretend left wing journo's such as columnist Simon Jenkins in today’s Sunday Times, unconsciously uses the same arguments that Victorian supporters of Child labour and opposers of the early nineteenth century Factory Safety Acts made. For example “Risk Assessments”, Jenkins describes today as “one of the most useless generators of red tape and maladministration ever invented”, actually save lives and protect people in vulnerable jobs.

Middle class berks such as Simon who live and type, in their protected privileged cloisters, inhabit a world a million miles away from those who actually do real work for a living.

Anyway, as previously posted this week is European Health & Safety Week. Each year there is a different campaign, the 2007 campaign is called ‘Lighten the Load’ and is targeted at supporting employers, workers and safety representatives to prevent musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs – back and muscle injuries). A million workers per year are affected by MSD.

Also on Wednesday it is "National Inspection Day" when all trade union safety representatives are asked to inspect their workplace. So this Wednesday, even if you have not been trained as a safety rep, then at the very least walk around your workplace with your manager looking out say for obvious slip, trip and fall hazards. Better still; also contact your union branch, regional office or the TUC about being trained as a trade union safety rep.

Jenkins can also go walkabout …down the plank!