Recent Articles

Bill launched to restore right to strike

This from a Labour Representation Committee press release

John McDonnell, supported by the Trade Union Co-ordinating Group, presented his Private Members’ Bill to parliament last week.

If adopted, the Bill would significantly improve unions’ ability to defend their members and would be the first step towards the full restoration of trade union rights.

After coming first in the Private Members’ Ballot and in consultation with the trade union movement and leading trade union lawyers, John McDonnell MP is sponsoring the “Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill” to tackle the increasing practice by employers of using minor technical errors in the balloting process – which have no material effect on the outcome – to take unions to court in order to prevent them from taking industrial action.

Commenting on the Bill, John McDonnell MP said:

We have seen in the current BA Cabin Crew dispute and many other recent disputes, employers have been able to exploit loopholes in the existing law by using minor technical errors in a trade union ballot to thwart trade unionists from taking strike action.

This resort to the courts by some ruthless employers is bringing current employment law into disrepute and undermining industrial relations in this country. This cannot be right and in the interests of good industrial relations needs to be addressed.

Steve Gillan, General Secretary of the POA, said:

The POA supports the Private Members Bill entitled Lawful Industrial Action as employers are using the anti trade union legislation to stop legitimate industrial action from taking place, by getting the Courts to rule on minor technical errors. You only have to look at the disgraceful cases taken against Unite and RMT Unions. This is a small step in the right direction but the anti trade union legislation needs to go to protect all workers.

Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the NUJ, said:

The NUJ supports the Lawful Industrial Action Private Members’ Bill because we suffer from some of the worst trade union laws in Europe. Employers should not be allowed to use the courts as a way to clamp down on democratic votes in the workplace. The heavily one-sided nature of the law does not respect basic civic rights and freedoms and therefore needs to change.

John McDonnell MP is sponsoring the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill to amend section 232B of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (c. 52) to extend the circumstances in which, by virtue of that section, industrial action is not to be treated as excluded from the protection of section 219 of that Act.

The Bill has been co-signed by Kate Hoey MP, Tony Lloyd MP, Dave Anderson MP, Michael Connarty MP, Austin Mitchell MP, Frank Doran MP, Kelvin Hopkins MP, Jim Sheridan MP, David Crausby MP, Ian Lavery MP and John Cryer MP.

Second Reading of the Bill will be 22nd October 2010.

There will be a mass rally and lobby of parliament on the 13th October 2010.

Mayor of Doncaster and the Taliban

Yep, apparently we could all learn from the Taliban:

Peter Davies, who has made it his personal mission to rid Doncaster of political correctness, said that under the Taliban, Afghanistan had an “ordered system of family life”. By contrast he said social policies which disregarded the importance of the traditional family had “created mayhem” in Britain.

Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home, studying in schools or universities, from talking to men who were not family members, and from wearing cosmetics, high heels, or clothes made in “sexually attracting colours”.

They were stoned to death if caught having sex outside marriage, and whipped for not covering their ankles in public or being unaccompanied by a suitable male relative in public. Despite these shortcomings – which Amnesty International concluded “virtually confined women to the home” – Mr Davies said the Taliban’s rule did have some advantages.

WTF, it is like saying the trains ran on time under the Nazi’s, so lets not worry about concentration camps. Sometimes a regime is so oppressive that nothing can be added to the equation as an ‘advantage.’
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Fay Weldon, the only real feminist?

Fay Weldon is plugging her latest book. Shock horror in the Mail and Telegraph, this ‘feminist ‘ is saying women should just accept men need looking after and don’t challenge them too much.

Well its not really a shock, she has been coming out with this crap for a while now. As the interview in The Guardian points out:

She was vilified for her assertion in an interview in 1998 that being raped wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a woman, and a few years ago she complained that feminism had undermined men too much. In her book What Makes Women Happy she advised faking orgasms. Did she feel part of the feminist movement?

“Inevitably, but I never wrote propaganda because it all seemed so evident. It became obvious that you had to be a feminist because it was such a ridiculous state of affairs.” Her contemporaries, she says, “usually come round to my way of thinking in the end. I’m probably the one, the only feminist there is and the others are all out of step.”

Well arrogance aside that she is the only real feminist, it seems that by most criteria she seems pretty out of step.
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Real face of the BNP ‘family festival’ exposed

Yeah I know its the News of The World, but they have done an undercover expose of the real nature of the ‘family’ Red White and Blue festival.

Demos against the BNP event are good, but the numbers won’t match those that voted for them . What is needed is to take apart their arguments, policies and expose what they really stand for and seems like the NOTW has done a good job of that last element.

It’s not enough to shout racist, we need to argue why they are wrong to blame immigrants for a lack of decent social housing and jobs if we are to counter their hate filled message.

Although I’m saying its good the NOTW has exposed this, I’m in not in anyway saying the Murdoch press are on our side, but lets use what they have discovered in our arguments and campaigns.
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Bankers taking the piss

Senior City bankers are demanding pay rises of up to 10 per cent this year to make up for the clampdown on the bonus culture, a senior City head-hunter has told The Independent.

So when they fuck up and can’t get ‘performance related’ bonuses they then want more on their salary? So what happened to all the free market arguments about competition, rewarding ability etc etc.

Seems they want to get paid well regardless of how well they perform. Now what would they say of that was the public sector?

Support Pamela and her two daughters against deportation

Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters are under threat of deportation by the Irish government. They fled Nigeria after another daughter died following female genital mutilation and Pamela’s husband’s family planned to forcibly mutilate her remaining two girls. The husband remains in Nigeria but supports his wife and does not want his daughters cut.

Check out ‘Let them stay‘ for how you can support this family .

Below is a you tube telling the families story. Pamela explains the process of FGM and how she tried to get help for her daughter who bled to death after being butchered, all in the name of controlling women’s sexuality.
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Censorship at Waterstones

New Humanist Blog report :

Just as it looked like Sarah Palin was going to walk away with the Bad Faith Awards, Christian ‘lone’ Voice Stephen Green makes a late bid for the prize, by forcing the Waterstones in Cardiff to cancel a book signing. Patrick Jones was due to sign copies of his new poetry collection Darkness is Where the Stars Are but Waterstones cancelled at the last moment citing concerns about disruption. Apparently our friend Stephen had mobilised a few believers, aggrieved at what they consider Jones’ blasphemy, who sent emails and called the store. What’s the deal! Are we allowed to pressure bookstores to cancel events featuring people we don’t like… if so there’s a few I’d like to start with.

I phoned the manager of the Cardiff Store, who wouldn’t comment but referred me to John Howells in their central press office. He said the event was cancelled because of concerns about safety in the light of a high volume of complaints received yesterday (he wouldn’t say how many or what proportion were emails or phone calls).

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Left Women’s Network – conference 12th July

Below are some details of the conference on the 12th : Women in Struggle! Left Women’s Network Conference

The Left Women’s Network (LeftWN) is the women’s section of The Labour Representation Committee, an open democratic organisation committed to the development of a radical policy agenda for the Labour Party, the trade unions and the wider labour movement. Since 2007 we have been successful in bringing women together from within The Labour Party, trade union movement, campaigning organisations and the wider labour movement.

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How the left should resolve their problems

After much serious thought on the subject I have come up with the answer to all the squabbles on the left.

I considered serious political theoretical and strategic discussion but decided to cut to the chase, yep all the old bitter battles as to who did what in 1981 or more recent spats with the SWP could be settled by a cage fight.

Apparently :
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Victim of attack should ‘seek help for being gay’

I despair sometimes, why can’t god bothers stop worrying about what others do in bed. Pink News reports:

The wife of the First Minister of Northern Ireland has caused controversy with her born-again Christian outlook on life. Iris Robinson is MP for Strangford and chairs the Northern Ireland Assembly’s health committee.

Reacting to news that a man was viciously attacked because he is gay, she suggested that he should consider therapy to “cure” him of his homosexuality. Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster today she condemned the attack on Stephen Smith but added: “I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals trying to turn away from what they are engaged in. And I have met people who have turned around to become heterosexual.”

This pisses me off in so many ways.
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