Welfare at Work Week is back! 29 Sept to 3 Oct
UNISON branches are highlighting the support available from UNISON's charity - There for You - including grants, debt advice, and budgeting tools.
Contact your branch or organise your own event
unsn.uk/4lUBWeR
There was also a minutes silence to remember Party members who have died during the past year. A list of names was shown on the main screens to music, which included the name of Newham Councillor, Neil Wilson.
There was also number of good speakers including a passionate speech on the new Hillsborough Law followed by a choir singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
There was also international speaker, Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who gave a very thoughtful speech on how the Labour movement’s in both our countries had chosen Parliamentary democracy rather than protest to benefit working people.
After Conference I went to be part of a panel for a fringe with Michael Shanks MP (Minister for Energy, Security & Net Zero), Bill Esterson MP (Chair of Energy, Security & Net Zero) and Tessa Khan (Uplift). The panel was chaired by Sue Ferns (Prospect). I was there in my role as Vice Chair of Local Authority Pension Fund Forum. I will post later on this event. For some reason the photographs were all red!
Afterwards I joined friends and colleagues at the best social of conference, the Labour Friends of Bangladesh event and had a fantastic meal with one or two speeches.
Conference starts officially at 11am on the Sunday. We had a delegation pre meeting at 9am, so a fairly sensible night, but I did go the the London Labour Party reception, were there was a number of excellent speakers and took this picture of my Newham and CWU colleague Bashar, with the very pleasant spouse of a certain well known Labour politician!
There for You – UNISON’s charity – is here to help
Seasonal Food Fund 2025 opens soon! Keep the date
unsn.uk/4noavvh
Opens 12 noon, Tue 30 Sept – 24hrs only
£30 voucher per eligible household member
For those on low income/in financial difficulty
The launch was in the Wanstead Tap and had been organised via Newham Bookshop (were you can order the book https://www.newhambooks.co.uk/). I have come across Pete professionally, a number of tomes over the years.
Below is a quote from Pete about his book
“I was born into a city where housing was affordable. But I've grown up into one where it was not. What has gone wrong in London over the last 35 years? And where is it going in the future?
My new book, Homesick, tells that story. Out Sept 25 amazon.co.uk/Homesick-How-H…”
Pete read extracts from his book then answered questions from the audience. My question was whether to solve the housing affordability crisis there needs once again to be sufficient public subsidy of social rents and mortgages? Pete thought that the public would not accept the increases of taxation necessary to pay for this. He instead thought housing taxation could help solve the crisis.
I brought the book and got Pete to sign it and he also offered some written supportive advice about my employer :-)
By coincidence, later that night I joined colleagues to take part in the bimonthly Newham Rough Sleeping count.
Check out https://www.blood.co.uk/ and a long time comedy favourite (nothing like my experience giving blood) Hancock's Half Hour in HD Colour - The Blood Donor
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