Naive fool that I am - I use to think things then were horribly tough on claimants.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The new CONDEM medical assessment: Sink or Swim
Naive fool that I am - I use to think things then were horribly tough on claimants.
Uniting the East End: A call to action in Tower Hamlets
"In a week when we are all waiting with trepidation for the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review, while marvelling at the twists and turns of Lib Dem MPs as they attempt to crawl out from the tatters of their higher education policy, there is a vital campaign happening on the doorsteps of Tower Hamlets. In less than a week, residents of the east London borough will be going to the polls to elect their first directly elected mayor.
Six months ago, many, many people from across London and beyond came to help me and Jim Fitzpatrick beat George Galloway’s Respect and the parties that would later join together and form the coalition. During that election the people of Tower Hamlets rejected the politics of division and joined with us backing our Labour vision of a united East End.
Since that election we have been putting that philosophy into action, challenging the far right English Defence League when they tried to march here, challenging the coalition on cuts to our public services and more recently fighting for Labour in this election.
Ed Miliband and Left Foot Forward have long argued that Labour needs to be a campaigning movement or it is nothing. By opening up the campaign to new volunteers we helped to create, with a fantastic team of organisers, a formidable campaigning force during the general election. Our team working under the banner ‘Uniting the East End’ attracted hundreds of volunteers, which let us do the most important thing – in elections – talk to voters.
Last time we had three years, in this election we have had three weeks! As MPs, Councillors, Greater London Authority members, Labour Party activists and community volunteers we are fighting as a Labour team on behalf of Labour candidate Cllr Helal Abbas, but we can’t do it alone. We need the support of activists from across London – so let’s start building that renewed movement in the East End, home to so many of the great campaigns of the past.
What’s at stake next Thursday is a billion pound budget, in one the most vibrant and diverse boroughs at the heart of our capital. For the people of Tower Hamlets this isn’t about personalities, it’s about the real issues – schools, housing, jobs and the economy. This is no time for a Galloway-backed independent who appeals to the margins and wants to turn the clock back to the politics of the past.
Over this weekend, and on election day on 21st October, readers of Left Foot Forward have a chance to help defeat the Galloway candidate in Tower Hamlets, and make Labour’s Councillor Abbas a mayor who will finally turn the page on the politics of division, and start putting the people of Tower Hamlets first.
Please come and join us in this campaign, details of how you can help can be found below. The campaign office is at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9RA and will be open for canvassing and leafleting from 10am-6.30pm every day until the election. Please ring 0207 729 6682 or email abbas4mayor@gmail.com for further details or to let us know when you are available. With your help we can ensure a Labour victory on the 21st of October.
(picture Dan McCurry at Labour Party conference)
CONDEM Cuts: Megan tells it as it is
The usual health warning on the absolute accuracy of my rather hurried typed notes.
Megan - "...there are 3 choices facing us: 1. work for a collapse of the coalition, 2: Defeat the Coalition in a General Election or 3: "armed insurrection" (this was a Joke).
Megan realised that some of the people present would in fact want "armed insurrection". However she pointed out that this could never happen since it was not TUC policy. So if you wanted this to be policy you should put in a motion to next year's Trade Union Congress (knowing the limited reasoning skills of some of my readers - I will stress this was also a joke). Option 1 is her choice: Bringing down the Coalition is more likely and we do not want to wait 5 years.
Megan believes that public services are a bulwark against barbarism. But we have a problem opposing cuts since according to some surveys - 50% of the public support the idea of CONDEM "savage cuts" including 40% of trade union members! This show's the scale of problem. We have to explain in the teeth of the media basis, what is really going on. Why the government is wrong and cannot deal with the deficit by cutting public sector investment which is essential for growth. Cuts will lead to unfairness and recession. VAT is regressive and any increase in basic tax is so also and will not help those who due to the Bankers recession are at risk.
We should get the tax that is currently avoided and evaded. The "Robin Hood" tax would bring in lots of money for a very small outlay. The PCS argue convincingly that 20 thousand more tax officers jobs would bring in £20 billion in tax income. National finance is not to be paralled with consumer budgets. You saw this last week when the German government finally paid off it war debt, it's debt from World War One! While it took us 60 years to pay off our 2nd World War debt.
Organisation in our workplace is absolutely essential but not enough - there are 6.5 million trade Unionists but this is not sufficient We have to work with our communities. we need to stress that public sector cuts are not just job cuts but services cuts as well.
The cancellation of the "Building Schools for the Future" resonated with many people. They could see the cuts taking place to something they could measure and value. This not just about being a romantic opposition but about good organsiation.
If a 1pm Club faces closures don’t wait for a demo of 9 workers outside the town hall but get service users, family, friends, shop keepers to come and protest. This is an attack on communities, not just an attack on a group of workers whose jobs might go.
We need to be aware of CSR on 19 October and the SERTUC/TUC plan to target the 150 Tory/Lib Dem MP's who are at most risk at the next General Election. Some of them might be the most vicious towards the cuts but they are also very fond of their seats!
Numerous other demos on 23/10/10. Congress House rally 12-1.45. It has to be a good turnout. Megan does not want to know everyone there personally. This is crucial.
In May 2011 the Tories and Lib Dems must feel the pain.
A Marathon is not a sprint. Who knows what to expect with them at the moment. The Child benefit fury. They didn’t expect at all the reaction that got and that is important. Also the stresses and strains over tuition. We need to be creating the understanding that allows voices to be heard.
A recentl Yougov polls may have showed that 70% want housing benefit cuts but at the same time - 60% do not want the Post Office privatised. This is an outcome of work done last year by CWU. We must do the same. Local campaigning. Unison is ideal because you have centre in every town. In the recent strikes in France there was wonderful inspiration. In one small town of 5000 - 25% of the population was on rally. In every small town thousands of people protested. This make the government realise that this is not us looking after jobs but defending the rights and needs of our communities. We are not going to win with mass rallys of polemic but by detailed work, organised work and working with communities. Finally, to finish with a chilling moment she reminded us what Cameron said at the recent Tory conference.
“Look what we have done in 5 months imagine what we can do in 5 years”.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Ultra Left's cunning plan to smash CONDEMS
Being entirely removed from real working people they are inevitably squabbling amongst themselves about the correct order and sequence to place knitting-needles-in-nostrils and already proclaiming betrayal about the date the underpants need to be placed-on-head.
What some folk don't understand is that trade unionists don't want to take time off work to be patronised and lectured by Grandstanding poseurs. Until they "get" this then all they will do is to further divide and weaken us. Empty and futile protests in favour of a brave new dialectic world must be put aside as we engage in a desperate real life struggle to defend the poor and the vulnerable.
In my next post I won't be so bitter and twisted and will post on someone who has a real, practical and intelligent way forward.
Housing matters: Alison Seabeck MP New Labour Shadow Minister
I grew up in a Labour home, my dad was a local councillor who led Havering council before spending five years at Westminster. He was dedicated to provision of high-quality social housing and remained involved with housing late into life.
I’m proud to be leading the fight for Labour on one of our key areas. I’ll follow in John Healey’s footsteps in placing housing front and centre when we speak to our local communities and campaigning for the party. I’ll hold the coalition to account and I’ll listen to you when you tell me how the coalition’s policies are affecting your area.
If we get housing right then we build strong, safe, cohesive communities; get housing wrong and it isn’t merely a case of poor housing stock or a shortage of homes, it’s an affront to people’s sense of community, to their sense of justice – you need only look at the way housing was exploited by the BNP in Barking & Dagenham, where I was born, to see not only the consequence of where we get it wrong on housing but where we can rebuild bonds with the community which have broken down and reaffirm our commitment as a party that listens and campaigns for a fair deal on housing.
Too many people thought we weren’t listening on housing and we will need to reflect long and hard on our record; a record of which we can be justifiably proud – even in the depths of recession the Labour government was building tens of thousands of new homes and funding repairs to existing properties and protecting homeowners who feared they could lose their homes; but we must not be afraid of looking carefully and critically at our record and asking, what more could we have done? How will we do better next time? We will listen, we will consult, there will be no sacred cows.
Decent and affordable homes go to the heart of our welfare state and to the heart of our Labour Party. Whereas the Tories let our housing stocks thin out and disappear in the right to buy and let the remaining estates sink into disrepair, we embarked on the most ambitious repairs programme to bring all council homes up to a minimum decent standard and it will be a test of this government’s tenuous commitment to fairness whether or not they commit the remaining funding needed to complete this vital work.
Faced with the immense challenges that we face in housing, we need a government which acts to resolve the problems. Instead, we have a coalition convinced that all it needs to do is hide the evidence or pass the responsibility down to local councils or the voluntary sector. When addressing the high cost of housing caused by low supply their response is to take away people’s ability to pay by cutting housing benefit and to scrap regulations which will mean substantially fewer homes will be built over the next twelve months than if Labour had been in power. We have a housing minister who wants to see more first-time buyers and yet he’s pursuing policies that will see fewer homes built and he’s scrapping Labour’s HomeBuy Direct scheme which helped first-time buyers get a foot on the ladder.
At every turn, the coalition is making the wrong decisions. Cameron says see what they’ve achieved in five months and imagine what they could do in five years. It doesn’t bear thinking about. In housing they have managed to alienate almost every sector within housing and are being taken to court by housing developers
In the 1980s I worked in Roy Hattersley’s office and I know the price of opposition, watching a Tory government chip away at the foundations of a fair and equitable society; I also worked for Nick Raynsford, the former housing minister, when we were in government and I know what we can achieve and why winning the next general election is so important.
I promise I will listen to everything that this party has to say. We will attack this government when they make the wrong decisions on housing but we won’t rush into policy making and we won’t have a knee jerk response to everything but we’ll keep the pressure on the Tories and the Liberals. I’m delighted to be part of a strong shadow CLG team under Caroline Flint and I look forward to hearing from you.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Howard Jacobson wins the Man Booker Prize (and cheered me up)
I don't think some of the things he says in his newspaper column have always been very wise but he is genuinely very, very funny, self deprecating, and a "real" person (IMO). There are so many cardboard nonentities around nowadays. He cheered me up no end while running (very slowly) around Wanstead flats.
The reviews of and readings of the book "The Finkler Question" have tickled my fancy even though it is a very dark but comic book. As he says - so are all the best novels.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE CUTS - RALLY & LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT - 19 OCTOBER
The event will start with a rally in Westminster Central Hall (map attached) at 12.30 pm (doors 12.15 pm). The main auditorium at Central Hall holds more than 2,000 and the TUC wants to make sure that it is packed – if it’s not, then what message does this send out to the coalition Government?? Speakers have yet to be confirmed but once this information is available we will let branches know.
The lobby After the rally, the focus moves to the House of Commons. The aim is that unions and service users lobby a carefully targeted list of Government MPs which is attached. For those who are unable to attend the lobby they can meet their MP at a constituency surgery as close as possible to the CSR - MPs need to understand the impact the cuts will have on their constituencies and the case for an alternative approach to the deficit reduction. To simplify this process the attached briefing document sets out everything you need to know about the lobby – the points you need to put across to your MP, why we are lobbying, what is “lobbying”?, making arrangements in advance to meet MPs, what should be raised when you meet your MP. A model letter to be sent to MPs is also included.
What you need to do NOW! Engage with ALL your members, encourage them to make appointments to meet with their MPs at the lobby. We need as many people as possible to attend not just branch officers and activists – this will affect everyone and everyone needs to be given the opportunity to show their objection to the cuts and the CSR. Also engage with community groups and service users and encourage them to attend - it doesn’t matter that some of them may not be trade union members anyone can attend the lobby and it is important that there is a cross section of the community involved.
Please ensure that this information is passed on to ALL YOUR MEMBERS and encourage them to making arrangements to meet their MPs, especially those on the targeted list.
If you have any queries, please contact your Regional Organiser".
Nestle: What a rubbish Company!
"Nestlé, the world's largest food company, carefully polishes and peddles its profile as a "responsible corporate citizen" - in its glossy presentations and publications, in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) get-togethers, even at the United Nations, where it now sponsors public events. But Nestlé workers and their unions around the world know a different Nestlé - a company which, given half a chance, never hesitates to violate international standards on trade union rights and Conventions of the United Nations' ILO in its ruthless quest for profit"
Nestle is a completely immoral and rubbish company on other important issues. Send off your protest messages to Nestle CEO, Paul Bulcke here.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
No more broken promises Nick?
Video from the National Union of Students. Hat tip Labourlist
Update: even more hypocrisy - check out stroppy
Greater London UNISON 1st Health Brigade
On the far left of the Brigade banner is one of their new Pioneer recruits.
Who I understand has been given special personal responsible with regard to filling the Brigade's reconnaissance hot air balloons.
:)
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