Abbey Gardens Vintage Summer Party - Sat 8 June 2013 2-5pm

A fantastic community garden project in West Ham ward, Newham holds its annual summer Party.

How to allocate a £1 billion of pension assets?

Picture is from an unusual meeting held recently with other members of Newham Pension Committee on fund "asset allocation".

What types of investments you should allocate pension fund money into is arguably the most important decision that a board or trustees can make. Far more important than deciding who you employ to manage the funds day to day or even how much they charge.

Depending on your fund requirements, if you say decide to invest too much money in high risk equities rather than lower risk bonds it could have a devastating impact. Conversely if your fund really needs to take more risk and you think the economic outlook is right, then it can have a very negative effect if you opt for the safe options.

Newham decided that instead of having the usual type of review meeting meeting, where our fund advisers will  present  issues and options to the Committee who will then be expected to make a decision - to try something different. So the fund officers organised a special "round table" meeting and invited different City professionals and the Committee members (including the trade union reps) to debate and argue what should be our asset allocation fundamentals.

There was  a robust but productive wide exchange of views and I think all committee members went away with a much better understanding of the problems and possible solutions than a dry presentation. Good stuff. I recommend other pension schemes should consider doing the same. (picture of me with Cllr Ayesha Chowdhury and UNISON pension rep Gloria Hanson)

West Ham CLP Euro Husting 28 May 7.30pm Vicarage Lane Community Centre, E15

All 6 candidates to be ranked by a ballot of London Labour Party members next month have confirmed that they will be attending. Including UNISON supported candidates Sanchia Alaisa and Ivana Bartoletti. Existing London MEP Mary Honeyball is also planning to be there.

"Trident: What its for?" Newham Compass and Fabian Debate

This picture is from the debate organised on Trident by Newham Compass and Fabians last week.

Kate Hudson from CND and Labour Party Councillor (and NEC member) Luke Akehurst debated the proposed Trident Nuclear submarine and missile programme.

Former Newham Cllr (and budding author) Graham Lane (middle of photo) chaired the meeting.

Luke went first and started by arguing that he is not here to argue for the use of nuclear weapons rather it's role in deterring such war. While there is no current threat Trident is an insurance policy for the next 40 years, since who knows what threats we will face during this time interval.

He agrees that the world would be a much better place if there was no nuclear weapons but believes that this is more likely to happen if there was multilateral rather than unilateral disarmament. Since no one would care if we disarmed by ourselves. If you have a deterrence you can negotiate it away but if you haven't got it & then find you need it to face a threat then it will be too late.

Trident lite nuclear solutions make pre-emptive strikes more likely & more dangerous than not having nukes. The total cost of Trident should be viewed over its entire lifetime - 0.3% of total government budget.

Kate was not having any of this and costed Trident at £3 billion per year for 30 years. The equivalent of 30,000 new homes being built each year which could provide 60,000 jobs.

She believes that even the UK Military top brass are worried about opportunity cost of Trident and that the UK cannot have Trident and be an useful military ally. Former Labour minister Des Brown thinks we cannot afford Trident. She points out that even Tony Blair admitted that that having Trident is not about defense but about national status.

Having any nuclear weapons is just too dangerous. If we think we need them then so will other countries.

The debate and Q&A that followed was civilised and courteous unlike similar debates I remember from my youth. As an aside I pointed out in the Q&A that myself and Terry Paul (a Newham Councillor who was also present) were "cold war warriors" who had spent part of our misspent youth in the 1980s as members of the British Territorial Army. Who at the time were trained to defend the German plains and stop the possible advance of hordes of Soviet tanks.

At the time I didn't think we would have much success in this role nor the reassurance we were given that don't worry if nuclear weapons were being used in the battlefield because as long as we had 18 inches of earth above our trenches, we were perfectly safe from anything apart from a direct hit! ...Yeah.

Yes Google is evil..so are Amazon, Starbucks and all such tax thieves

I was at a pension trustee meeting a little while ago where I was criticised for bringing up our share holding in companies who don't pay their fair share in taxes. I was told that it was the duty of such companies to reduce their exposure to all taxes.

I disagreed and while I didn't express my true views that these companies are spongers who steal from the old and the sick. I did point out that we expect companies we invest in to be well managed, aware of risk and run with integrity.

There is a balancing act to be made by companies on minimising their taxes while recognising they have a duty to pay towards in public services and infrastructure they rely on to run their company in the UK.

The negative publicity and financial damage to the brand if they misbehave is also immense. 

If they get this balance wrong then the CEO and the Board are simply incompetent as well as immoral and not fit and proper people to run the company.

The best way to respond...Donate to "Help for Heroes".

Everyone will be shocked by the reports about the cowardly and savage murder today in London of a unarmed soldier by brain washed moronic animals pretending to be people of faith.

I think at this time our thoughts are firstly with the victim and his family.

While it is too soon to know exactly what happened and why - I suspect that they are doppelgangers
of Norwegian fascist mass murderer Anders Breivik. These extremists are all the same - ignorant, selfish, vain, cowardly bigots and should be treated with the contempt that they deserve. 

I think the best way to respond is to click here and donate whatever you can to "Help for Heroes" http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/donate/. Pass this on.

What have the unions ever done for us?

Hat tip "I support public services don't let the Con Dems destroy them"

"Feeding Cats": Motion to Branch Committee....

(this is a real motion to a South London trade union branch committee May 2013. Straight out of Monty Python)

“Feeding Cats”

Unfortunately a serious Health & Safety/Environmental Health situation has
arisen in the ***** ****** branch office whereby some Branch Officers are creating unnecessary risks to their colleagues and the local communities Environmental Health and Safety.

It came to my attention several weeks ago that Branch Officers had left cat food out for a cat which they spotted in the office back garden. Local cats, feral and domestic, occasionally come into the office back garden and are generally not a problem. However, I objected to the actual feeding of cats
(feral or domestic) in the back garden by users of the office as unnecessary and irresponsible on the following grounds:

• When someone leaves food out to feed a “cat” in the back garden they are not just feeding one or more “cats” they are feeding all manner of feral animals, pests and vermin, i.e. Rats, Mice, Ants, Cockroaches, Flies, Insects, Pigeons, Foxes etc. etc.

• These creatures, if their numbers are not controlled in city areas, can cause nuisance, spread diseases (toxoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, psittacosis to name but three) and therefore be a potential danger to humans, children and families in the local area as well as users of the branch office and garden (and be a danger to other animals as well).

• If cats and other feral animals are seen in cities and in the vicinity of humans it is generally because there is already an abundance of food available in the area to sustain them; so they don’t actually need an easily available source of food to be provided for them by humans. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there they would be somewhere else where there is food available.

• It is not the responsibility of Branch Officers/council employees to feed feral animals while at work or in the workplace (local domesticated cats should be fed by their owners).

• Leaving food out in the garden simply encourages not only cats but all the other feral animals and pests as mentioned above to move into the area in increasing numbers. It encourages the presence of these animals where they don’t need to be (workplace environments can also be hazardous to animals) and so creates a problem where there doesn’t need to be one, and where one did not previously exist.

• If people wish to take irresponsible risks with their own health that is their right, however they have no right to take irresponsible risks with the health of other people, colleagues, and children and families in the local community.

I have therefore been shocked and appalled by the reaction to my objections to “feeding cats” by other Branch Officers and the Branch Secretaries and have been compelled to submit this motion in defence of a socially responsible position on H&S/Environmental Health issues. Not only were my above objections dismissed without any engagement of rational argument or discussion, other Branch Officers have seen fit to actually inflame the situation and make matters far worse.

One Branch Officer actually decided to go ahead with the idea (without permission or consultation) of continuing to put food out in the back garden indefinitely in order to deliberately lure the cat that was originally spotted (supposedly feral?) back into the garden so it can be “Trapped” then taken to
a Vet and neutered! Then what?

Unfortunately this ludicrous idea has been endorsed by the Branch Secretaries as a “sensible solution”! Again with no consultation. This “sensible solution” to a problem that has not previously existed and still doesn’t need to exist (Branch Officers are creating the problem) addresses none of my concerns about the long term consequences and damage to the local environment and local peoples, including children’s, health and well being caused by encouraging feral animals, pests and vermin.

• I also believe that staff leaving food out for animals in workplaces, which encourages pests and therefore creates a health hazard, is against Council Policy and breaches H&S policy.

• I believe UNISON Branch Officers “Trapping Animals” when not doing so in the capacity of their substantive post of a Council Officer/employee is illegal and breaches Council Policy.

I regret having to submit this motion when there should be more important issues to discuss but I believe it is now a matter of education on socially responsible attitudes towards Environmental Health and Health & Safety within the workers & Trade Union movement.

• I am simply calling for a socially responsible position where we do not encourage animals (feral or domesticated), pests and vermin in the workplace and community by leaving food out in the back garden. It is not necessary; it is a health risk and creates problems where they don’t need to exist.

Please vote to endorse this bullet point.

Barnet Casino - the video

Watch this clever YouTube cartoon video on the consequences of the privatisation of Council services in Barnet, London.

Rudderless trots?

(Guest post by Denver Walker) "As the Government of millionaires attacks on one front after another, the political ultra left is bereft of direction.

The catalogue of brutality unleashed by the side currently winning the class war would have been unimaginable even three years ago.

Yet never forget that the ultra left did their best to let the Tories win. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have gone over the same period as real wages have continued to fall in an unprecedented way. The tide of privatisation rising across the public sector has begun irreversibly to engulf the health service and now laps at the feet of postal workers.

The demonisation of claimants is gradually capturing the popular imagination as benefit cuts force us back to the nineteenth century. Legal aid cuts and employment tribunal fees (coupled with changes to rules on remission), together with other changes to employment law further hobble workers individually and collectively. Even the seemingly solid social gains of a generation of progress towards equality are fragile in this most reactionary century.

The defence of the public sector equality duty will be of totemic importance. So where is the opposition? The (capital "O") Opposition is Labour who can still mobilise meaningful opposition to "Tory cuts" (as in the London Fire Service) but is hamstrung by the ultra left's meaningless sloganising and selfish distructive gesture politics. In large part the absence of our Labour Party where we so badly need it is a function of a generation of ultra left grandstanding and stupidity on the part of extremists in the trade union leadership.

The strategic error of supporting Trotsky entryists and not the centre left in Labour in the 1990s has had cumulative, calamitous political consequences for the trade union movement which are still playing themselves out. Since the General Election the unions have mobilised around real and winnable issues such as pensions and have achieved incrediblely successful results.

The largest strike since the General Strike secured real meaningful concessions on public service pensions. Laughable attempts by extremists who want members to die in poverty to satisfy their perverse views undermine the morale and motivation of our activists. Pragmatic General Secretaries are staring into the horror and know what they can do as opposed to meaningless and futile oppositionalism.

Out on the further reaches of the left there is no direction or purpose. Those who hoped the Green Party was a new road to a new Jerusalem can pick their way through the litter strewn streets of Brighton as they contemplate their error. The largest far left political party has imploded, and those clinging to its wreckage simply haven't noticed yet that it is over (though it may not be dead for years - some people still sell the "Newsline").

The latest electoral project of the far left has broken all records for tragic irrelevance. Socialists might as well practice "entryism" in the Monster Raving Loony Party as continue to place hope in TUSC. Such is the lack of hope in ultra leftism that an excellent film maker has managed to lever his deserved reputation to promote the "Left Unity" project (which falls somewhere between Sir Richard Acland's Common Wealth Party and the political equivalent of vanity publishing).

There is no alternative to the Labour Party - and no matter how many lamps the middle class ultra left rub no such alternative appears. The political problem confronting the working class in this country, as throughout Europe, over the last generation is the political inadequacy of the wreckers and splitters in our trade unions, not the political label of the politicians we can vote for. They provoke and encourage infighting and allow the right wing to make us appear irrelevant. Unable to make a difference in the wider world, comrades retreat into squabbles they believe they can win even if no one else has a clue what on earth they are going on about.

Internecine strife between and within groups on the left will continue to get worse as long as we fail to change the script of this tale and tell them either to get on the bus or go forth and multiple. So what do we do? We don't just say sloganise. Wherever you are, working or unemployed, you can organise collectively to resist the ruling class offensive as best you can. We have suffered many defeats and will suffer more if the ultra left have their wrecking ways.

Lives are being ruined - and ended - and we, who should lead the resistance, are continuing to fail since we put up with those who want to destroy us and our unity for their selfish ludicrous politics So we must rethink, regroup and redouble our efforts. Due to the wreckers, some may be rudderless in a storm but that is no excuse for failing to keep the boat afloat. Our trade union movement, the oldest in the world, remains the largest voluntary organisation in UK civil society by a country mile. We are not weak. We are not powerless. We need not be ineffective.

We have just got to sort out the ridiculous sects and the fantasists who divide us.