Why Labour is Literally the Party of the Future

Only the Labour party has the determination to unlock the potential of every child in the land thereby securing not only their future but the future of the country too.

Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party promise to transform the lives of every family for the better. They will do this be reopening the 1,000 Sure Start centres that the Conservative party so spitefully closed when entering a needlessly austerity driven power nine years ago. That's a Sure Start centre in every community and a radical expansion of child care in the UK.

Labour will also be putting an end to child poverty ensuring that every child of primary school age is given a free hot meal each day to aid their concentration and learning.

Compare this to Boris Johnson's Conservatives. If returned to power next month, they will ensure that 515 constituencies will receive less funding per pupil than in 2015. Only 17 constituencies will actually get a raise, and they are the ones held by the Conservatives.  Because the Tory party are only considered with looking after themselves and providing for their own future. They don't even want to acknowledge the child poverty issue that the UN recently highlighted. They prefer pretending that it isn't even happening, because it's not happening to their children is it?

But Labour aren't just looking to secure your children's future, they are also pledging that mothers will receive not nine months, but twelve months paid maternity. This will ensure that mothers can spend longer with their newborn babies and they will also have the opportunity to choose working hours that suit them.

You may have heard the Tories bleating this weekend about Labour's figures, that they believe (based purely on assumption - remember that the Labour manifesto hasn't actually been published yet) that the spending plans for such pledges are astronomical. But, after his consultation with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation amongst others, Oxford University economist Professor Simon Wren-Lewis argues that it is the Tories spending plans that are truly unsustainable...thanks to the needless black hole that is Brexit. Labour's spending plans are actually far more sustainable because they will increase taxes on high earners and the Corporation Tax, something that the Tories do not want to do, because that's hitting their elite friends. 

If you find it disgraceful that the Tories are essentially saying we cannot afford to achieve even the basic level of dignity that we all deserve, but they're still happy to fund, protect and bail out their friends, then vote Labour.

If you want your children to have the very best start in life, vote Labour.

If you want the UK to prosper in the future, vote Labour.

Please, please, please, vote Labour at the polls next month.

Out On Blue Six: Bryan Adams, or It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

If my calculations are correct (to be honest I may be out a week) I think that today marks the twentieth anniversary since I started my first proper job at the age of 19, working for the Employment Service (now of course known as the DWP) in St Helens. 

I think I started a thirteen week casual contract there on Monday June 28th. It would go on to become the longest job I have ever had, going on to work at Ashton-in-Makerfield over the winter and early 2000, and then at the Huyton office until 2005.

I cannot believe that twenty years have gone by since that summer of 1999, but I have nothing but happy memories of it. Whenever I think back, I remember so many fun times, brilliant friendships and team camaraderie. But I'll always remember one girl from my time there. Like me, she was a casual working over the summer but just a teensy bit older than I was. Her name was Cath Davies, she was from Golborne and she was arguably my best mate there. She had the same hairstyle and looked very similar to Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the richer who had a big hit around that time with Kiss Me. In fact I probably had a little (not so secret) crush on her. Her favourite song was Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams. Back then, the jobcentre would have a supply of tapes that would be played across the office for staff and clients alike and Adams' track was on there. Each time it played, she'd beam a great big smile and start dancing around the claims! Her contract finished before mine and I remember her drinks party taking place in the (much missed now but then newly opened) Bear and Barrow pub in St Helens. When she was leaving, we hugged and she promised us all that she'd be back for my leaving do and the Christmas party.

Needless to say, I never saw her again.

Whenever I hear this song, I think of Cath Davies, and the best days of my life - the summer of '99

End Transmission

Fighting Back: Petitions to Sign

We may have been victorious in getting the odious Toby Young to resign from his role of 'Uni Tsar' this week (and oh, how the wailing and gnashing of teeth has begun from his supporters within the party), but Theresa May's ridiculous reshuffle reminds us that scum rises to the top.

Remember Esther McVey? This failed TV presenter and heartless woman was an atrociously callous former Disability Minister and Employment Minister under IDS, and booted out of government in the 2015 election because of her actions and attitudes in parliament: her consistent voting against an increase in welfare benefit spending, and her £170,000+ expenses claims whilst arguing that 'it is right that people are going to food banks because as times are tough, we are all having to pay back this £1.5 trillion debt personally". Unfortunately, since 2015 she's been working her way back into the heart of government, first by securing the safe Tory seat of Tatton when George 'Pencils' Osborne resigned, and then by bagging the Tory whip job, promising to bring 'a feminine touch' to the role - whatever the hell that means. Now the Maybot has returned her back to the DWP, hiring her as DWP Secretary, a wholly unsuitable job for someone without empathy. This is a death knell for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society and we need to voice our disapproval by signing this petition.

An while we are at it, if you haven't signed the petition to reject the proposal made by Simon Dudley, the leader of Windsor's Tory run council (pictured above with his glorious leader), to remove the homeless in the area by May 19th, the date Prince Harry is to marry Meghan Markle. Homelessness is NOT a "security risk" as this heartless snob claims, it is a symptom of this government's ruthless austerity measures. Dudley may feel the homeless population in his "beautiful town" puts it in an "unfavourable light", but the real spotlight should be put upon the policies of a government which has resided over an increase in homelessness since coming to power in 2010 as a direct result of their austerity programme. Please sign it here

Cesar Chavez (2014)

Diego Luna's biopic of farm worker organizer and union activist Cesar Chavez made little impact here in the UK - in fact I'm 99.9% certain it went straight to DVD. It's a real shame but, when you consider Chavez has little impact, outside of the Latino community, in the US it's perhaps not very surprising. 

Cesar was an activist who came to prominence in the 1960s with the movement to unionise poor Mexican workers in the USA. Luna's film reminds us just how hard it is for the most vulnerable workers in our society to get the fair deal they deserve, a fact which remains shamefully true to this day. As Cesar (played by Michael Peña) says himself in the film at one point "I'm angry that I live in a world where a man who picks your food can't feed his family." An immigrant, Cesar came across the border from Mexico to the US, like many others, to seek work in the farms of California. They found work, but they also found poverty and exploitative conditions that would not have looked out of place a couple of centuries earlier - they were earning just a couple of dollars a day and were even denied toilets out in the fields because the growers, those land owning wine merchants, fresh produce and snack magnates (largely represented here by John Malkovich's composite character, an oily right winger by the name of Bogdanovich) claimed that Mexicans did not know how to use them! Undeterred, Cesar Chavez spoke out against the unfairness he saw, shaping a great movement for justice and equality for the immigrant Latino workforce, and he did this in a wholly pacifistic manner, employing peaceful protests and even going on hunger strike for many weeks. Alongside him in the campaign were his wife and children, who defied the growers and the law, risking imprisonment and often finding themselves under arrest or threatened and abused by strike breakers and bully boys eager to stop the unionisation and education of their previously cowed, silent workforce. Chavez becoming a co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association which at its peak represented the interests of 50,000 Mexican field workers in California and Florida. He received strong and influential support from Robert F Kennedy and even travelled to Europe, spreading the news of his work and the plight of his fellow migrants here in the UK, where he was supported by the TGWU, which the film shows.

Unfortunately, Luna's film falls into the trap many biopics of inspiring  and good men fall into and paints a rather reverential and ultimately somewhat dull picture of the man. There are brief glimpses of the flaws inherent in Cesar Chavez; how he devoted so much of his time to his politics at the cost of his family and how Cesar’s eldest son was bullied at school because of his father. But it's not enough sadly, and a voice over lamenting the time he did not spend with his family, principally the aforementioned son who bore the brunt of his radicalism, really doesn't cut it. Keir Pearson and Timothy J Sexton's script really needed to be bolder here and explore this side of him a little more to offer a more rounded and nuanced picture, but nevertheless this remains an inspiring film for those on the political left such as myself.

Fight Back : Trade Union Bill

If you oppose the Tory government's Trade Union Bill and wish to stand up for your rights and your freedom at work, then please sign the following Labour petition ahead of the vote tonight

Sign here

Snapshot From a Picket Line

I was going through some old things last night - cuttings, photos, little keepsakes - and I came across this from my days as a PCS Shop Steward in the early to mid 00s. I'm the one on the right

And yeah I know, 'early to mid 00s' - it looks like the bloomin' 1930s doesn't it? But that's a mixture of poor photo quality, the fact that every strike I was ever on seemed to occur in the middle of a freezing, miserable winter and because, of course, of my dress sense; yes that really is a flying jacket and a Soviet furry hat I'm wearing. I could say that I believed you had to take ownership of the stereotype, but I actually wore that shit on a regular basis back then!

The picture comes from a time when I was a PCS rep for the Jobcentre outside of Liverpool I was working in from around 2000 to 2005. I can't really remember when exactly this particular strike took place or what precisely it was for (and though the banners we're holding proclaim it's 'the right to be safe at work', I don't really recall a strike for security screens or a stronger security presence)

The reason for my memory lapse it two-fold; one, the photo has come away from the cutting it was from and two, to be honest - and without wishing to blow my own trumpet here - at the time our office was ranked one of the most militant in the region and we would, under my stewardship, regularly come out on strikes that were not 'national' - though we did of course come out on all of those too. In short, I stood on an awful lot of picket lines in those five years.

The other two guys with me, Steve (centre) and John (on the left) were great friends, in fact I've only recently lost touch regrettably with John. Looking at this photo now I can feel my feet going cold, recall the constant stamping up and down on the ice packed floor and of seeing the foggy clouds our breath made whenever we spoke, be it to try and convince colleagues not to cross our line or to share a joke to lighten our obviously miserable moods.

Anyone whose ever manned a picket line will know exactly what I mean. Quite a timely pick with the TUC congress this week.

Fighting Back : Petitions to Sign

The BBC: It's clear the Tories have this much cherished, vital institution in its sights. Frankly they won't be happy til they create the Big Brother Corporation - which we saw the glimmer of during the Scottish referendum last year -ideally with Murdoch at the helm whose exorbitant less value for money Sky TV never seems to trouble them as much as the licence fee. Please sign these petitions to show we will not stand for the cuts and destruction at the BBC at Tory hands here, here, here and here

Unions: It's also abundantly clear that the Tories want to destroy the last bastion of people's rights - the Trade Unions. Their latest bill will make it impossible for workers to withdraw their work to express dissatisfaction with unfair employers and policy decisions. It is a deeply regressive bill that will take every freedom and right away from us. Sign here

The workfair scheme, a policy from Cameron, Osborne and IDS may prove to be illegal and, as such, cost £130 million in damages. This petition rightly demands that the cost for their nefarious policy should come from their pockets and not the coffers of the public who suffered from their decision. How is IDS still allowed to work?

A passionate and personal petition demanding the restrictions to council housing be changed.

Fostering Crisis Action for Children are highlighting the shortfall of foster carers at a time when up to 68,000 children desperately need protection and safeguarding from domestic abuse.

Lastly, a glimmer of hope; Jeremy Corbyn looks set for success

Fighting Back : Petitions to Sign

Greece is the word! Following the impressive No vote to austerity, petitions have appeared demanding the UK govt provide a similar ballot for us here in the UK. Sign them here and here There's an event going on round about now outside the TUC, see info here And show your solidarity with Greece by donating to the campaign here

Make it illegal to leave dogs in hot cars I saw it myself in Settle last week; the weather is extremely hot and people are still leaving their pets to fry in locked cars. 

LIDL Everyone loves Lidl and its bargains, right? Wrong; think of the employees and their poor working conditions and sign this petition to ACAS

Australia A petition seeking to remove their PM Tony Abbott for silencing the endemic sex offences and abuse against asylum seekers. It's a shocking read - Abbott has made it illegal to blow the whistle on these crimes.

IDS the Cunt Let's get him booted out of cabinet.

How can the world's third best women's football team not be allowed to perform in Rio next year? Sign here to allow the Lionesses their chance to roar at a platform they truly deserve to compete in.

"First They Came For The Trade Unionists...."

As it was before, so it is again now.

Just four days have passed since the election result was announced and just one day has passed since Cameron has organised his cabinet and already the Tories have shown that they intend to dismantle the rights of the working classes once more.

Sajid Javid, the new Business Secretary, has announced he intends to make ''significant changes'' to the strike laws under the new Conservative government when the Queen's Speech takes place next month. It will be one of the first bills to be put forward and had previously been blocked by the Tories coalition partners, the Lib Dems. As a former Shop Steward myself, this move terrifies and angers me considerably. 

"We need to update our strike laws" he says. "We've never hidden away from the changes we want to make. I think it's essential we make these changes"

The change being that a strike affecting essential public services will require the backing of 40% of eligible union members whereas currently, a strike is valid if the majority of those balloted come out in favour of industrial action.

They will also need 50% turnout minimum in strike ballots and will lift restrictions in place regarding blacklegs and scabs, sorry 'agency workers', to replace those workers on strike. 

"By increasing the thresholds," Javid went on to say "it will certainly increase the hurdles that need to be crossed"

What he means is legal strike action will become nigh on impossible meaning workers will just have to put up with poor and dangerous conditions, low wages and pensions etc and the worst kind of employer will thrive and benefit as a result.

As we saw with Thatcher and the NUM in the '80s, the first action of a Tory government is to attack the working classes and ensure they can no longer unite and organise to fight for their share of the pie.

It's happening again. I'm reminded of Pastor Martin Niemoller's words about the rise of fascism and the holocaust;

"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me"

Don't be complacent. Don't think this does not effect you because you're not considered left-wing or because you don't belong to a trade union. These actions are made to ensure you have no rights whatsoever and you will wake up one day and find that is the case and all those people who tried to make sure that didn't happen will have been dealt with first.

So support your local unions now. Support people's right to stand up and protest when something isn't fair. 

Because after them, it's your freedom next.

And the abolition of the Human Rights Act, another bill the Tories so desperately want to pass, proves that.

In Sane

I'm currently in the throes of rehearsing and helping to write and create this theatrical production for its debut on World Mental Health Day, 10th October....

It's a wonderfully joyous experience and I'm getting loads out of it though, with so little time now 'til the performance and things needing to be learnt and tightened up I'm wondering if I'm perhaps a little In Sane for getting such a buzz from it! 

If anyone is in the St Helens area, why not come and watch!

The Alternative Party Political Broadcast.

Taken from Keith Topping's blog. Quoted for truth.

Out On Blue Six : Al Green

I have always loved this song by Al Green...

Do you have a song that brings back such definitive memories of a place and a time? This has become one of mine, and now when I hear it, I am instantly transported back to The Queens pub in Huyton one evening in 2002 I think when, surrounded by workmates, we had several drinks for one of our number who was leaving - off to a job entertaining in Spain. Her name was Jane Colligan and I think it was her who put this on the jukebox and had us all singing along.

That's her there. 

It's funny but of that crowd I worked with and ran around with back then, I've only kept in touch with one person, and he's there in the back of that shot. My best mate John (and he and I don't meet up as often as we'd like) Funny how, with one thing or another - some wilfull, some accidental - times tide casts us all adrift on its waves...let's stay together? Hmm. Still, great memories.

End Transmission

All They Want For Xmas Is A Fair Wage

It's the time of year where we all find ourselves shopping online and purchasing from Amazon UK. But do we ever actually give a moment's thought to the people who pick and pack our orders for distribution? They're not Santa's elves, they're real people, and this year Amazon has taken on nearly 15,000 extra agency staff to deal with this, the busiest time of year.

But I'm saddened to hear they are treated shoddily. Whilst they make Christmas for us, many of them cannot even afford the bare essentials from their hard day's work because they're not paid the living wage. They're paid the minimum wage, or just above it, but the multinational could well afford to pay the living wage - it's especially grating when you consider their tax debacle.

Amazon also operate a sack if you're sick policy that sees you turfed out if you take 3 sick breaks in a 3 month period, 15 minute breaks that commence wherever you are in the giant warehouse, 10 hour days, compulsory overtime, monitoring and timing of toilet breaks, half a point if you're 1 minute late - and 3 points and you're out and a performance console that tracks and logs worker activities so they can be 'released' if they're considered too slow.

Don't get me wrong, none of this is unusual across many employers in this country, but this is Christmas and this company is at its busiest. With that in mind, Change.org have started a petition to get these facts out there to the public and make Amazon an example. Please consider signing it HERE

Out On Blue Six : Robert Wyatt

Chosen to mark the sad news about the BAE decision to implement 1,775 job cuts across the UK, and bringing to an end 500 years tradition of shipbuilding in Portsmouth altogether. 

My thoughts with all those who received such galling news on this devastating day.

End Transmission

The Inexorable Rise of Esther McVey

First she was a bland flop at TV presenting. From kids TV, to GMTV, religious programming and whiny pointless consumerism junk.

Then it was a move into politics.

And the only way is sadly up for Esther McVey

As Disability Minister, McVey - amongst many other atrocities - showed a heartless disregard for disabled people in social housing as the Tories pressed on with the Bedroom Tax.

Today, it has been announced that the government reshuffle has seen her promoted through the DWP to Employment Minister.

Presumably this is to allow her to stick the boot into the disabled workforce who were made unemployed thanks to the scrapping of Remploy last month. An action she couldn't even be arsed to attempt to defend when the media came a-calling, preferring instead to kick all requests for interviews into touch.

Always best to kick someone when they're down isn't it? And if they're societies neediest and most disadvantaged, well all the better.

Think that's actually the Tory motto.

Morrissey Gets A Job

There Is (Still) Power In A Union

Great news this week as the Bakery and Food Allied Workers Union (one of the smallest unions) has won its dispute at Premier Foods aka Hovis in Wigan. 

The management had attempted to bring in zero hour contracts, that hellish slavery that approx 5 million workers are already currently enduring, to push down wages for the staff and increase uncertainty in contracts. Two weeks of strike action followed, with mass daily pickets. A third week was ultimately averted as a deal has been agreed between union and management. The agreement, signed this week, promises to pay any agency employee who works 39 hour weeks for 12 consecutive weeks the same rate of pay as full time employees. It also pledges to use overtime and banked hours for existing staff for any temporary shortages in labour.

Pauline Nazir, BFAWU regional sec, said; "The sense of solidarity among the workers has been absolutely brilliant. It makes you see why you're a member of a trade union and why our parents told us to join a union" Whilst regional organiser Geoff Atkinson said "We believe we got everything we wanted. It's a massive victory for us. We are a small union and we took on a company. It should encourage other people. We've proved that if you stick together, you can do away with unscrupulous contracts. We won't stand for our members being replaced by agency labour"

The perfect excuse to play this...

Remploy Rant

The final Remploy factory in the North West (Heywood to be precise) has closed today. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see the workers in tears on the local news tonight, some of them have been there for almost 30 years. Remploy was a vital and absolutely commendable organisation providing physically and mentally disabled people employment and an independence and quality of life that they simply would not get elsewhere. The Tories have branded Remploy a loss making organisation and believe the disabled should be in mainstream employment, as a result they've been closing factories these last couple of years. Maybe they should be in mainstream employment, maybe inclusion shouldn't be an allusion, but that's bloody easier said than done in the middle of a recession. Able bodied people can't get a foot in the door with maintream employment just now, what chance have some of these got? I really fear that some of these people will never work again. Sorry for the rant but it REALLY makes my blood boil. Typically, the Minister for Disabled, Esther McVey, refused to comment on North West Tonight. 

Out On Blue Six : Cat Stevens

In 2005, I was so royally fed up of having spent the previous six years as a civil servant/representation of hate for the mass unemployed that I decided to jump ship and landed, quite inexplicably and utterly ill advisedly in the bizarre and unsuited role of customer services for an office furniture supplier.

I lasted three months. It remains the only job I ever got the sack from and I seem to recall skipping for joy all the way home that morning after my unexpected - well not all that unexpected I guess - severance meeting with human resources. I skipped for further joy when I saw the incredible severance package I was rewarded afterwards. I still think they made a mistake!

I absolutely hated the place. The work - tied to a phone all day listening to people place gibberish orders and type in equally gibberish codes on a colour co-ordinated package that looked about as high tec as a ZX Spectrum game - was not for me, the atmosphere was deeply unwelcoming, the people decidedly unfriendly and small minded. It was an established family business of many years in a small town, hence the small mentality (however it didn't excuse any of the blatant casual racism they so often showcased) They seemed to live for office furniture and little else. Me, I couldn't give a toss about office furniture, I only took the job because I could walk it to and from work each day as opposed to the twenty minute train commute I had been doing the previous six years and also because it might mean I wasn't subjected to face to face abuse on a daily basis. I was however subjected to stultifying boredom on a daily basis and was so adrift I regressed the seven or so years professionalism I'd had from previous jobs to become a slack jawed, incompetent, awkward loner counting the ceiling tiles and watching the hands of the clock go by...willing it to be 12 noon, for lunch, or 5pm for the end of another dreary, soul destroying day.

Why am I saying all this - and in Out On Blue Six? Well because I think Cat Stevens had been there before me, in a firm that ironically shared the same name...

Out On Blue Six Xmas : Wizzard

Many moons ago, well about 10 or 11 to be precise, when I worked in a jobcentre, Roy Woods Christmas classic was one of several piped into the office on a loop each day in the run up to the festive season. To amuse myself I concocted a story that my workmate, the gorgeous Jane, on reception was one of the children singing on this song, and proceeded to tell any clients passing that that was the case. She got some very funny looks and comments from them I must say, including one who asked her if she received royalties for each play!

A favourite since childhood, Christmas would not be Christmas without Roy Wood and Wizzard.

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