Big Society Capital(ism)

David Cameron's Big Society idea, has been re-launched yet again with Big Society Capital. It comes at a time when charities are feeling the effect of cuts in funding and many are struggling to keep afloat. The money is largely taken from dormant bank accounts - in itself a dubious activity - and will be paid to "entrepreneurs" so they can solve society's problems.

The NCVO (National Council Voluntary Organisations) has talked of "a perfect storm" of cuts and rising costs creating a toxic mix of circumstances for charities with increased demand for their services, growing financial pressures and an unprecedented fall in income.

Charities are the first casualties of cuts in local government funding. For example, Notts County Council is seeing its funding cut by 8% yet has cut funding to the county's charities by 34%.  Most embarrassingly for Cameron, the flagship Big Society charity MyGeneration run by Big Society Ambassador Shaun Bailey has had to close "due to lack of funds".

This initiative is designed to distract attention from a government in serious difficulties. One wonders how many "social entrepreneurs" will be using their money to pay for dinner with Cameron.

Many social enterprises and indeed charities are run for the benefit of fat cats on 100K plus salaries. They are free from the public scrutiny and accountability which the public services they supposedly replace had.

There isn't a hope  that they can fill the place of the National Health Service which Lansley is hell-bent on destroying.

Still the launch of this bank did give Cameron a good news story which the BBC subserviently treated as a serious bit of news. So the Big Society is obviously good for something.

Oppose Cameron's snoopers on the internet

The government wants to give itself new powers to spy on our internet and email use in real time -- but a massive national outcry can save the internet and stop the big brother law. There are no guarantees that the law will be used against "criminals and terrorists". It can easily be used against legitimate protest, against anything the government finds a bit embarrassing and against "whistle blowers" who draw attention to Tory Party skulduggery.

Public outrage is growing and news reports suggest that Cameron and Clegg are being forced to slow down their march to secure draconian powers to spy on what we do online. If we pile on the pressure now, we can persuade them to back off the big brother bill for good.

The last time this was mooted in Parliament it failed precisely because of strong public opposition. Our call to Cameron, Clegg and Home Secretary Theresa May can protect our privacy and save the internet. Sign the petition to beat back big brother and forward widely.

Click here to protest

Coming soon

Dear Francis

Dear Francis Maude,

As a pensioner I recognise the government view that "we are all in
this together" and I realise that there is nothing in this budget for
pensioners such as myself.

On the other hand exactly how much do you and your cabinet colleagues
stand to gain from the reduction of the top rate of income tax?

I would appreciate an answer to this question because this information
should be in the public domain.

I am sure you agree that MPs are elected to represent the people and
not to line their own pockets.

The argument that the tax cut is part of a package of measures does
not hold water. We are entitled to ask why this self-aggrandising
measure is slipped into the package and whether you can in all
conscience vote for it.

And of course the argument that top earners evade the tax cannot
possibly apply to members of parliament.

Yours sincerely,

Derek McMillan

Trots?

A spectre would seem to be haunting the British government. People have the cheek to object to being paid nothing to work for Tescos – they are all “Trots”. Teachers and parents object to school privatisation. They are all “Trots” too. And as for Andrew Lansley's NHS privatisation – the “Trots” would seem to include all the professional bodies representing health professionals, patients groups and the trade unions inside and outside the Health Service. Whoever these “Trots” are they do seem remarkably powerful. How come nobody has ever heard of them? If you want to know what “Trots” believe then this little book

will tell you. It is based on an historical public domain document drafted by Trotsky in 1938 yet when you read through it there are surprising echoes of the present day.

“Mankind's productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever-heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the general population . Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another.”

If we take it as read there are no Fascist regimes nowadays – just an overweight BNP clown in the European parliament sitting on his expenses – the rest of this is very familiar. The people of Greece are expected to put up with cuts in wages and pensions while the bankers live the life of Riley. Millions of the 99 percent feel indignation about this.

And the transitional program has practical advice on how to turn this indignation into action and make the bosses pay for their crisis.

Derek McMillan

March 2012

It is quite easy to publish to Kindle and it is a very cheap way of getting yourself a copy of the Transitional Program without an introduction by Cliff Slaughter.

You have to put up with (or skip) my introduction and it does look as though the Transitional Program was a join work between me and Trotsky :)

Still this is a way to make the text available on kindle. Click here

The arrogance of Andrew Lansley

Kandahar – this was murder

The public in the UK were appalled at the deaths of six British soldiers in Helmand province. Then hard on the heels of that news came the massacre of 16 civilians in Kandahar.

The British soldiers at least had names and faces in the British media. The 16 civilians were just a number for most people. And naturally the authorities started talking about a “lone gunman” as a way of washing their hands of the affair.

The “lone gunman” was armed, trained and shipped off to Afghanistan by the military. They now act surprised when civilians get killed. Remember that these are the people who bombed a wedding party in Kandahar in 2008. 37 Villagers in Wech Baghtu died, including 23 children and 10 women after planes flattened houses shortly after US troops had fought Taliban insurgents nearby. But it is OK. They apologised.

The 400 British deaths pale in comparison with the uncounted – deliberately uncounted – civilian deaths in Afghanistan. And the civilians who are shot down or blown up are not feted as heroes.

Obama has finally realised the futility of this war and plans to pull out with the fig-leaf of “handing over to local forces.” This mass murder in Kandahar will only feed the cycle of revenge killings and more lives will be sacrificed on the altar of American Imperialism.

The likelihood is that the Taliban will end up in power after a further bloody civil war. This underscores the pointlessness of the sacrifice which the politicians hypocritically celebrate.

Progress with Manual for Teachers

I have written 16000 words of the manual for teachers. The introduction now reads like this:

If you were trying to find out how to clean a teapot, the chances are that you would go to someone who had cleaned a lot of teapots successfully. If you want to know how to dance, wouldn't you go to a dancer? Yet when you want to learn about teaching you often find yourself in the rarified realms of some ivory-towered academic.

So this is not a book of educational theory, or pedagogy to give it its Sunday name. My only qualifications are:

1. 32 years of successful teaching.

2. Running a helpline for stressed teachers on behalf of the West Sussex Teachers' Association for 16 years.

3. Founder member of Classroom Teacher http://classroomteacher.org.uk

And of course the one thing anybody can tell you is that teachers are idiosyncratic. In the end you have to teach your way not mine. But listen to an old master – learn from my mistakes then you can make your own!

“Taking ownership of your pedagody” is what they call it. I would caution you to avoid the word “pedagogy” around Sun readers. They will have burnt your house down before they have looked in the dictionary and found out it is not the same as “paedo”

The book is arranged in alphabetical order. It seemed like a good idea at the time but then it took me ages to decide what to put under “Z” I can tell you.

A note on grammar

I will state this now, before it irritates you. I have used “they” and “them” in place of “his or her” and “him and her”.

I could quite grammatically have used “him” but when well over half of teachers are female that is ridiculous. I could have used “her” thus excluding myself from the teaching profession.

I opted for something which is grammatically incorrect. I don't intend to cite Shakespeare as my authority for this. Shakespeare did so many things to the language that you can only get away with if you are Shakespare! (He spelt his name several ways too).

I will cite Jane Austen: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, the King James Bible, Dean Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden,  George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis.

I refer the reader who is really really interested to the website http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html




Derek McMillan
http://derekmcmillan.com

Welcome to your police station!

The writer Nevil Shute advised a young American from the southern states that the safest place to evade racial attack and abuse in England was a police station.

This has never been a very convincing assertion but with Group 4 Security becoming the first firm to run a police station it may become even less so. G4S have controversially been given a £200 million deal to build and run a police station in Lincolnshire. They hope it will be the first of many and the death of the existing police service.

Jimmy Mubenga was "restrained" by G4S officers whilst being deported in 2010 and the result of their restraint was that he died.

Gareth Myett, a 15 year old boy, died in G4S custody in 2004.

Even the home office seems to have noticed a problem here and reportedly "warned" G4S about their dangerous methods of restraint. However the warning must have fallen on deaf ears because it came in 2006 i.e. *between* the two deaths.

Campaigners in Western Australia believe G4S should stand trial for murder over the death of an aboriginal elder, Mr Ward. Instead the G4S employee responsible was merely fined. Mr Ward had died while being transported in a stifling prison van at a temperature of 55 degrees. You can see that G4S will put health and safety at the top of their agenda.

Privatisation of policing is even opposed by the Police Federation who have not been in the forefront of campaigners against deaths in custory in the past. They can see that a privatised police service "may not have the same level of public duty and dedication as current police force staff."

Privatised police stations, schools and hospitals. The pattern is clear enough. Unfortunately the Coalition can always point to the Labour Party as the originators of their most odious policies. A party of the working class would oppose this.

Unison leadership found guilty of “unjustifiable discipline” against four Socialist Party activists.

Once again, the Unison leadership has been found guilty of "unjustifiable" disciplinary action against four activists for producing a leaflet protesting about the exclusion of resolutions from the 2007 Unison conference.

Today an Employment Appeal Tribunal (Judge Michael Supperstone QC) upheld the unanimous judgment of an earlier Employment Tribunal (Employment Judge Ms H Grewal, 27 January 2011).

That ET judgment last year rejected false allegations of racism against the four and found that the real reason for disciplinary action was that they had issued a leaflet criticising the Standing Orders Committee and the union leadership of preventing discussion on issue of union democracy.

Today's EAT rejects all five grounds on which the Unison leadership appealed against last year's ET judgment.

The four activists who were disciplined by Unison were banned from holding any union office for up to three years. The four are Glenn Kelly (formerly Bromley branch secretary and NEC member), Onay Kasab (formerly Greenwich branch secretary), Brian Debus (formerly Hackney branch chairperson), and Suzanne Muna (formerly Housing Corporation branch secretary).

The judgments of the ET and the EAT completely vindicate the four's struggle to defend union democracy. The unjustified sanctions against the four are part of a wider witch-hunt being carried out by the Unison leadership against activists fighting for union democracy and effective action to defend public services, jobs, pay and conditions. There is now a rising tide of discontent within the union at the ineffective policies of the leadership when faced with a tsunami of attacks on the public sector.

The Unison leadership unscrupulously tried to bolster their disciplinary charges with allegations of racism. This related to a cartoon on the leaflet protesting about the Standing Orders Committee's suppression of over 50 resolutions that used the well-known image of three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

The ET judgment forcefully rejected the allegation of racism: "All four Claimants are committed anti-racists and have fought against racism. They quite reasonably assumed that anyone who saw the leaflet would understand the cartoon to be saying that the SOC was out of touch in closing its minds to and ignoring issues that concern the membership."

"Looking at the context in which the cartoon was used (i.e. to depict the attitude of the SOC towards controversial motions) it cannot be said that any reasonable person would or should have realised that it would cause racial offence, and that not doing so was somehow 'careless'. That is reinforced by the fact that [it] never occurred to many people who saw the cartoon before its publication. These individuals included an Equalities and Diversity officer and black members."

Incredibly, during the case, it was discovered that Unison's own lawyers had used a cartoon of the three wise monkeys.

The tribunal found that the main reason for disciplinary action against the four was that they produced a leaflet criticising the SOC for rejecting a large number of branch resolutions.

It is estimated that the Unison leadership must have spent at least £100,000 on the disciplinary hearings and tribunal cases. At a time when the focus should have been on fighting public-sector cuts, the four have been dragged through four years of tortuous, money-wasting investigations and hearings.

Glenn Kelly, one of the four, is demanding that the witchhunts must stop,and the four branches taken out of regional administration so that the members can run their branches.  Also that the bans on the four should be rescinded and the latest charge against Glenn should be withdrawn.

Glenn  urges UNISON to fight the Condem government instead of hard working union activists.

 

For more info phone: 07595352795

Oh no they killed Scroogle!

Google has killed off Scroogle . That sounds more like a children's TV story than anything else. 

In fact the big bad Google search engine has been very annoyed for some years with an independent non-profit web service called Scroogle. Scroogle's crime was to offer Google searches without the ads and without Google getting all your personal details on file as they are wont to do. Google tried an imaginative array of dirty tricks against Scroogle. They sought in the US courts to have it declared illegal but even their million-dollar lawyers weren't up to that trick. They then blocked all the Scroogle computers from using Google at all.

Not long ago, Google changed its privacy policy to give itself more liberties with user data. Consequently search volume increased on Scroogle.

Microsoft even blocked anybody using the word "scroogle.org" from MSN messenger. Now Google and Microsoft are supposedly rivals but the corporations will always hang together against anything quite so un-American as blocking adverts.  

The final straw came with a series of "denial of service attacks" on Scroogle by person or persons unknown.  But surely someone else will come up with a similar way of thwarting the dreaded Google! Meanwhile here is a good object lesson for anyone who thinks capitalism equates with freedom of choice.

Trade Unionists and Socialists in London elections

Martin Powell-Davies (NUT) is standing on 3rd May to support 

the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

 

Education is under attack from this Government: budgets are cut, schools facing forced privatisation, workload at intolerable levels - yet young teachers are told they should work until they’re 68!

But, shamefully, New Labour's leadership won't oppose these attacks: Ed Balls won’t reverse cuts, Stephen Twigg supports Free Schools , Ed Milliband opposes trade unionists striking to defend their pensions. 

Teachers know they can’t just fight cuts and privatisation through trade union action alone. We also need political representatives that will speak out in support of union policies. 

The London Assembly elections on May 3rd provides a great opportunity to elect candidates who will stand out against the pro-cuts consensus from all the main parties.An excellent list of trade unionist and socialist campaigners has now been agreed to stand in the London-wide list section. It has a real chance to succeed in electing at least one assembly member. This would be a real breakthrough for everyone who wants to defend education and public services from cuts and privatisation.


The list will be headed by Alex Gordon, National President of the RMT Union. I am also proud to be part of the list of candidates and pledge my full support to the campaign.

As Alex Gordon has said in the latest TUSC Press Release: (http://www.tusc.org.uk/press160212.php) 

“We believe ordinary Londoners should have the choice of an alternative to the political consensus in favour of public spending cuts, privatisation and pay freezes advocated by all the three main parties. Recent statements by Labour Party leaders that in government they would not reverse Tory/Lib Dem spending cuts confirms that they do not offer working-class people an alternative and cannot be a viable opposition to the attacks on our communities and our public services.”
  

The full list will be:
Alex Gordon, president of RMT will head the list.
Nick Wrack, TUSC national committee
April Ashley, Unison executive, representing black women members
Sian Griffiths, FBU women's committee
Steve Hedley, RMT London organiser
Ian Leahair, FBU national committee member
Gary McFarlane, anti-racist activist
Martin Powell-Davies, executive member for Inner London of the NUT
Merlin Reader, CWU London committee
Joe Simpson, assistant general secretary of the POA
Jenny Sutton, UCU (FE) London committee
Nancy Taaffe, library worker made redundant, former chair Waltham Forest Unison
Jackie Turner, doctor and health campaigner
Lee Vernon, Young Members convenor for London PCS
Lesley Woodburn, unemployed, Unite rep on SERTUC LGBTQ committee 


Candidates are in a personal capacity 


Public rally to launch London TUSC GLA campaign: 
Speakers: Bob Crow, TUSC candidates, plus others to be announced. If you live in London come along and get involved… Wednesday 21 March, 7.15pm at 235 Shaftesbury Avenue London WC2H 8EP


Get involved
If you live in London and want to get involved in the campaign, e-mailtuscbulletin@yahoo.co.uk with your borough.

Gove the popular

Gove the popular
This will come as a bit of a shock to teachers, or indeed to anyone
who has seen or heard Michael Gove. Michael Gove is the most popular
government minister.
However the people he is popular with are people with money rather
than, for example. pensioners.
Education Minister Michael Gove has received more donations into his
private office since the election than any other cabinet minister
including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
He has received £35,500 for his private office and £61,279 at
constituency level.
His constituency has received a staggering 284,416 pounds and 40p
since he became MP. We don't know who gave him the 40p. We do know
that former Lehman Brothers' banker Jeremy Isaacs donated £3,000 to
Gove's office. Isaacs has given £100,000 to the Central Party fund in
the past but this was the first time he is registered as funding an
MP's private office.
Money management firm Christofferson Robb & Company LLP gave £5,000.
Electoral Commission records show Gove started registering his private
office donations in 2009. Since then around three quarters of his
private office donations have come from individuals with business
interests in The City.
The biggest single donation to Gove's private office was £150,000
donated in 2009 by Martin Calderbank of private equity firm Stirling
Capital Partners.
So obviously Gove has friends in high places. You can't call this
perfectly legal activity "corruption". That would be like saying the
whole capitalist system is corrupt.
And we wouldn't want anybody to think that :)

Lord Carey grovels to Tories

Lord Carey used to be on the Daily Mail hate list for his support of
women priests and his opposition to the persecution of homosexuals.
What a difference a day makes. The former Archbishop is now their
flavour of the month because he has supported the government's attack
on welfare.

Carey is well aware that the poor will suffer under the government's
proposals. They put a cap on payments to families. They put no cap on
rents and prices. A child of four could work out that the poor will
suffer.

It is as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as it is
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It looks as if
millionaire Carey has given up on that idea :)

Borgen - media in bed with politicians

Borgen

The Killing was a TV series which interwove a police drama with a political drama and was a great success on BBC 4. In the series Borgen the same producers concentrate on the political shenanigans in the Danish parliament.

It is not written from a socialist perspective but what it does show is the political elite and the media in bed with each other (quite literally in one strand of the story).

One gets the sense from Borgen that the media and political elite live in a comfortable incestuous environment and the one group not heard in this political democracy is …. the people.

The latest episode shows a female prime minister trying to implement a modest reform. A bill calling for 50 percent of all boardroom appointments to be female. The government would carry out punitive taxation measures against any firm which did not go along with it. Ostensibly feminist it is not a measure which would benefit the overwhelming majority of Danish women.

I won't detail the plot because I think you should watch the show. Look out for media smears used to discredit a minister proposing this measure; a strike of capital aimed at allowing big business to dictate to the government and more than one rotten compromise.

The Labour Party are present as a comic turn responding to advances by the far right by trying to prove they can be every bit as racist, misogynist and Islamophobic as the fascists!

It is alternately political and deeply personal; searingly serious and hilariously funny; foreign and all too familiar!

Watch it.

Borgen fyi is a slang term for parliament in Denmark - "the castle" where the political elite meet.

No fix no fee

If I do not solve your problem you owe me nothing.If I solve your problem, you pay me £20 per hour or part thereof.


You can do this via paypal

Payment per hour or part thereof

up to 1 hour £20.00 GBP up to 2 hours £40.00 GBP up to 3 hours £60.00 GBP up to 4 hours £80.00 GBP up to 5 hours £100.00 GBP

Teacher unions unite against OFSTED chicanery

Ofsted wants to toughen the language of inspections in England -
changing the "satisfactory" rating to "requires improvement". Ofsted
are notorious for their violence towards the English language and
towards education in general.

By sleight of hand they change "satisfactory" to "unsatisfactory".
They label schools as "failing" in order to create a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Who would want to send their children to a "failing" school?
Or teach at one?

And the not-so-hidden agenda? Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary,
bluntly pointed out "The government's real agenda behind this change
is of course inventing yet another category of schools that it will
then seek to force into academy status."

In a welcome move another teacher union the NASUWT echoed the NUT's
concern: "The seemingly tough talk we have heard from the government
today, may have popular appeal but the reality is that it has nothing
to do with raising standards,"

"Instead, it is about ratcheting up pressure on schools, without
providing the support and resources they need to assist them in
securing further improvements.

"This announcement will encourage a culture of vicious management
practices within schools which will have a profoundly negative effect
on the workforce and children and young people alike."

Nothing illustrates Gove's hypocrisy more clearly than his dodgy "Free
School" project. For all his blather about raising standards, Free
Schools like the proposed one in Southwater, Horsham, are not required
to have qualified teachers.

So any Tom Dick or Harriet off the street can come and teach our
children on the cheap. The private
schools the millionaires in the government send their children are
staffed by professionals. If Gove gets his way they will be the only
schools that are!

Gove to reform ICT teaching?

Like a stroppy teenager, Mikey Gove put his feet up on the desk and
declared "Ere this is soooo boring!" as his considered opinion on the
teaching of ICT in all schools in England and Wales.

"Technology in schools will no longer be micro-managed by Whitehall.
By withdrawing the Programme of Study, we're giving teachers freedom
over what and how to teach, revolutionising ICT as we know it. "

Quite right. It won't be micro-managed. It will be Micro-soft. Gove is
proposing that schools should use teaching materials which promote
Microsoft and Google.

It is usually the case that when government ministers threaten to
"reform" something, they are going to reform it the same way the
iceberg "reformed" the Titanic. In this case the DFE mean they won't
run ICT on behalf of the corporations, they will let the corporations
like Microsoft and Google run ICT directly. For Microsoft education is
a chance to make a fast buck. For Google, everything is a chance to
acquire information on consumers so they can target advertising at
them.

Microsoft Office is available at a special educational price of £99.99
per unit with additional costs for upgrades. Open source alternatives
like Open Office are available free.. The upgrades are free too.

And if Gove seriously wanted pupils to be involved in developing
software he would be promoting open source software where the code is
publicly available. This is far more educational than Microsoft which
protects its code as a "business secret".

Ark the 'erald Angels Sing

It was a privilege and an experience to visit Ark on Christmas eve. A lot of the people here are "between a rock and a hard place" and find a refuge in Ark. Ark is a Horsham charity for people who are homeless or who have drug or alcohol abuse problems.

Many have experience of prison and living on the streets. Even in leafy Horsham this is no joke. The United Reformed Church provided their premises for the Christmas period and the hall was decorated for Christmas and food was collected at local churches.

Some of the people who come have severe mental health problems and have suffered abuse; some can't cope with the idea of living in a house. Some can't talk about things. Others can't stop. And my job – apart from a bit of judicious Information Technology and spud peeling – is to listen, and learn.

It is the only time I have seen the smokers congregating outside a church as if it were the pub.

We don't believe in shoving Christianity down people's throats. Ark's Christianity is the sort that shares our food with people who haven't got enough. We have a first-class cook and no shoving is necessary.

The URC is just opposite my own church: St John's Catholic Church. At 11 there was midnight mass at St Johns. For many people it was their first midnight mass. One of the guys thought he was conducting the congregation from the balcony but he didn't disrupt anything. The carols were all familiar and nobody was shy about joining in.

And who knows they might be tempted to come to Mass some other time too.

The Iron Lady in meltdown

The film is not intended to cover all the political events of Thatcher's life and it deals with the political issues through the incoherent rambling recollections of an old and demented Thatcher.

A first-class actor like Meryl Streep can make the most unpromising of villains appear to have a sympathetic side. And of course she does. As well as eliciting sympathy for Thatcher's declining years and mental instability, she also portrays her as a “woman in a man's world” striking a blow for women!

However there are many women – miners' wives, Argentine widows of war, the millions who stood up against the poll tax (and I could go on!) – who are not quite sure Thatcher was a crusader for women's rights. It is their story which is excluded here. She was a crusader for Margaret Hilda Thatcher. And if that meant trampling on men or women she was indifferent.

And what about Thatcher's less likeable abiding hatred of the working classes – the miners, the poll tax protestors and practically the whole city of Liverpool? That seems to have remained on the cutting room floor. She once told a friend only to hire a servant “who had patches on the knees of his trousers” - she liked the working classes well enough in their place. Down on their knees!

And the other missing area from the film - apart from the political omissions whose name is legion - is Thatcher's use of racism for electoral advantage. Echoing Enoch Powell she ranted about Britain being 'swamped by people of a different culture'. That's on the cutting room floor too.

Jim Broadbent's comic relief as the ghost of Denis Thatcher is a masterpiece. The only thing missing is the other side of this apparent jovial buffoon. Denis Thatcher made sure his business interests came to no harm as a result of his Downing Street connection - on one occasion complaining to Nicholas Edwards, the Secretary of State for Wales using Downing Street notepaper just to underline the connection.

One thing Meryl Streep did get off pat was Thatcher's style of delivery - one which makes sure nobody gets a word in edgeways. This applied most of all to her cabinet colleagues or "bastards" as she used to call them. And there is a chilling sense in the scenes of the Falklands conflict, when Thatcher orders the sinking of the Belgrano that this was a woman with a finger on the nuclear trigger. It is a wonder any of us lived to tell the tale.

Thatcher is famous. Her claim to fame is that she led one of the most hated governments of all time, certainly of the post-war period. Even that dubious honour is likely to be taken away from her by the ConDem coalition.

“Where there is discord let us bring harmony” intercut with scenes from the miners' strike and the anti-poll tax movement showing Thatcher's carte blanch to the police to use force is as good as it gets for an obituary of a figure who came to symbolise the Conservatives' heartless attitude. They don't talk about class war. They are too busy waging it.

Oasis not top of the pops with teachers.

Horsham Churches together are proposing to work with the Oasis group to set up a controversial faith school in Southwater. Oasis, as you may know, celebrated Christmas by sacking teachers from their Salford academy. Oasis are not top of the pops with either the NASUWT or the NUT. Story in the Salford Star http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=1224

Shylock was an amateur

Shylock - the caricature of a moneylender demanding his pound of flesh
- has nothing on the payday loan sharks of today. Interest rates of up
to 5000 percent APR - and there is no decimal point missing there -
have been quoted for these philanthropic uncles who help the poor to
make ends meet. Even the more modest of them are charging 1800 percent
- the sort of figure that would have had Shylock's eyes watering.

And if the poor can't pay, never mind, these kind people will roll
over their debts adding interest to interest and then keep them in
Chronic debt. Shelter estimate that many could lose the homes they are
desperately trying to hold on to.

A YouGov survey for Shelter in December 2011 asked 4,014 people in
Great Britain if they had used payday loans, unauthorised overdraft,
other loan or credit cards to help pay their rent or mortgage in the
last 12 months.

One in seven respondents (15%) who took part said yes, representing a
national figure of almost seven million people, with almost one
million people using payday loans.

Have no fear the government are going to "look into it." Don't hold
your breath, they are still "looking into" the banks.

The conditions of the working class in the UK are intolerable but the
milk-and-water opposition are quite prepared to tolerate them. From
inside their cosy little bubble of padded expense accounts it probably
looks quite rosy.

A party of the working class would not put up with this.

A sell out for Christmas ... but not in the high street.

I don't know if the TUC are more comfortable on their knees than up on
their hind legs but it would seem they need a bit of encouragement not
to sell us down the river. (excuse the mixed metaphor - I am an
ex-English Teacher!)

I got this from Martin Powell-Davies (NUT Executive and Classroom
Teacher) today:

Just when this Government is cracking at the seams, just when we have
had one of the largest strikes for generations, some in the TUC are
trying to recommend a shoddy deal that will allow the Government to get
away with their pensions robbery.

Urgent pressure needs to be applied in every union to make sure that
negotiators do not cave-in but show the same courage and determination
as their members showed in their millions on November 30.

Reports from today's TUC PSLG meeting suggest that some, such as Brendan
Barber and Dave Prentis, are arguing that 'we have gone as far as we
can' and that unions should all agree to sign-up and throw in the towel
on Monday. Reportedly, the PCS have even been told that if they don't
agree by then, all talks will be ceased - with the threat that any
concessions that have been offered (not that there are many!) will be
removed.

I understand that the PCS, NUT and others like the NASUWT have stood
firm - but others are clearly looking to settle. But what gains have
been made? Prentis can apparently point to the offer of a two-year delay
in increased contributions in Local Government - but that only postpones
the pain to come. I understand that he has nothing similar in the Health
negotiations. Certainly, nothing similar has been offered in education -
in fact the hope that the Government might offer retirement ages set
lower than the State Pension Age has been dashed - so it's still
retirement at 67 and 68 for many. The only minor concession might be
that if you retire at 66, you'll only lose 3% of your pension for every
year of 'early' retirement instead of 5%!!. Even that would have to be
paid for by losses elsewhere in the scheme.

Crucially, the Government has refused to lift the 'cost-ceiling' - in
other words they are insisting that we pay for the Government's debts,
even though they have refused any valuation to justify their attacks. So
that means we still pay more, to get less and retire older - yet Brendan
Barber wants us to settle on Monday!

If these union leaders have no stomach for a fight, then they have no
right to call themselves a leadership. They will be guilty of accepting
a pensions robbery which, just two weeks ago, we were all united in
saying was unjustified and unacceptable. They will demoralise and
undermine our united movement and invite the Government to go on the
attack on jobs, facility time, TUPE, pay bargaining, capability
procedures - and all the other attacks that they have lined up.

So put out an urgent call in every union - don't cave-in. Call the
Government's bluff and announce the next day of united strike action in
January!

Martin Powell-Davies

http://electmartin1.blogspot.com/2011/12/urgent-pensions-no-shoddy-deal-set-date.html

Standing up for Britain - or for the bankers?

According to the children’s song - “In the big rock candy mountain, the cops have wooden legs.
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs.”



Obviously in the never-never land inhabited by the Financial Services Authority those bulldogs would be examples of “due diligence.”



Charged with the apparently serious job of regulating the banks, the FSA admit in their recent report that their light touch approach allowed the Royal Bank of Scotland to get away with (metaphorical) murder in its financial shenanigans.



“"This approach reflected widely held, but mistaken assumptions about the stability of financial systems and existed against a backdrop of political pressures for a 'light touch' regulatory regime."

The FSA were scared of exercising any “supervisory function” and admit they “failed to challenge the
management of RBS.” One is tempted to ask what the FSA are they for? A cop with two wooden legs would have done a better job.

Well thank heavens that sort of thing couldn’t happen nowadays……



Except of course one David Cameron was among the advocates of the light touch with the light-fingered speculators of RBS and his most recent brave stand for Britain was actually a brave stand for the City of London. God forbid that anyone should interfere with their activities.



It is obvious to everyone that we need control over the financiers; bulldogs with real teeth. Yet the politicians of all parties stop short in pious trepidation before the big banks and attempt to drain the ocean of depravity with spoonfuls of inadequate control.

Anders Behring Clarkson

New Top Gear Presenter?

Jeremy Clarkson might sound like some sort of bad joke, but in the
wake of recent mass-murders by an EDL sympathiser, and with EDL
supporters here in the UK posing for Facebook photos with guns,
incitement to murder is a crime that needs to be taken seriously.
Anyone is entitled to make fair comment on a matter of public concern.
There is a feeling that Jeremy Clarkson may have shown less than
sufficient care in his "Anders Behring Breivik" moment. There is also
a feeling that complaining about it will just inflate the Big C's Ego.
Like Breivik, his self-importance is already beyond safe levels.

Inciting people to shoot strikers is not funny. If Clarkson needs an
ambulance (perhaps after an overdose of Top Gear) I hope he realises
shooting the driver wasn't a smart move.

He is of course a friend and neighbour of David Cameron. One wonders
if he is just repeating something he heard from the other Big C?

However if you feel that it is worthwhile to complain about this
overgrown kid the links are as follows:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/#anchor
https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/specific-programme-epg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15977813

Dominic Lawson joins the dark side

Dominic Lawson's article in The Independent is a rehash of government
propaganda against the public sector.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-it-is-the-haves-going-on-strike-not-the-havenots-6269308.html

I wrote the following to d.lawson@independent.co.uk
You might like to give him your two penn'orth as well :)

I expected the Independent to go one better than the tabloid "gold
plated pensions" and "selfish striking scum". You are a disappointment.

As you very well know the government is attacking all pensions and
benefits - except of course the bonuses paid to deserving bankers, the
50 percent pay rises for top executives and Francis Maude's
astronomical pension!

You seem to think that a contract between an employer and an employee
can be torn up. Everybody in my profession agreed to accept less pay
in return for a good pension. Then forty years down the line people
like you can laugh at us and say "and you wont get the pension either
sucker!"

God Bless

New Blog for Horsham Ironing

This morning I set up a blog for Mandy at ARK who has an ironing business. Later on we will be setting up websites using wordpress. And tomorrow the world :) 

http://ironinghorsham.blogspot.com

Good King Wenceslas in reverse.

The government has quietly cut the winter fuel allowance to old age pensioners.

George Osborne secretly cut the winter fuel allowance, paid to most people who are 60 or older. However the information did not form part of the 100+-page Budget document.

This news comes just weeks after all the Big Six power firms hiked the price of gas and electricity, with more  predicted for autumn.

Most of those aged 60-79 will get £200 instead of last year's £250 when the payment is made in November or December. Those who are 80 or older will get £300 instead of £400.

The government bewail the fact that people are living longer and they cite this as a pretext for cutting pensions. Well cutting the winter fuel allowance is a good way to make sure they die soon enough.

Merry Christmas Millionaire Osborne - don't get cold now.

Scroogle? Google? Poodle?

http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html
Scroogle is a way of bypassing Google. When you use Google they
bombard you with adverts and nick all sorts of information about your
habits for the benefit of advertisers.
http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html puts a stop to all that but still
lets you use a search engine....until the dirty tricks department at
google have their wicked way with them!
Good old Scroogle. It's not humbug.

Sack the slackers!

The latest improvement to all our lives proposed to the government by the one-man think tank Adrian Beecroft is that employers have the right to 'sack the slackers' as the Daily Telegrapb impartially put it. The idea is that employers do not have to have any reason to sack you, if they think you are slacking then out you go.

As you know this is exactly what happens in firms where there is no union but Beecroft imagines a world in which this applies to everyone. A bit like ancient Egypt in fact.

And who is Beecroft? Well he has certainly purchased the right to influence government policy. He paid 530000 into Tory party finds.

But where did he come by money like that? Well it seems Beecroft is a very kind man. If you are strapped for cash your uncle Adrian will slip you 100. Of course everything has got a little price.

In thirty days the boys will be round to collect 136.72. That is an APR of 4394 percent. And no I haven't left out a decimal point there.

And if one of his employees fails to put the screws on his victims? Well they are obviously a slacker and off they go!

Our gold-plated pensions

Public sector pensions are gold-plated. You have only to read the Daily Mail or the Express to know that. A pity this image will not be appearing in your bank account any time soon. The average teacher pension is 10000.

However, there are exceptions to the rule of public sector pensions.Margaret Thatcher has received 535,000 for ex-PM duties from a little fund - well obviously a rather large fund - called the public duties cost allowance. Major and Blair have also had very nice golden handshakes (Major 490K and Blair 169K) from this fund. Remember that when some government minister tells you the nation
cannot afford your pension.

We're worth it!

The government is not at all sure it can afford the scheduled CPI-based increases to pensions - about five percent. However you can rest assured we are 'all in it together' ... except the bosses of major corporations who have received ten times that increase in remuneration. Apparently this is quite fair because they decide their own remuneration and they think they are worth an average of 2.7 million per annum.

The leadership of Unite has correctly branded this as "obscene" but Len McLusky's solution is to give greater power to shareholders to curb directors' pay. One can't help wondering why a trade union leader isn's saying "what about the workers?" It is no use for union leaders to stop short in pious trepidation before the power of big business. The workers in these corporations could give you a very accurate picture of how much use these directors are and whether they should be given house-room let alone a salary.

It does however suggest a very simple solution to the pension crisis. Let pensioners award themselves a 50 percent increase - because we're worth it!

Derek McMillan

My message to Frankie Maude

I have asked for an appointment on 26 October but have not so far
received a reply. As a matter of courtesy, the questions to which I
would like an answer are these:

1) Can you explain what has happened to the cast iron guarantee that
"We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from
April 2011, with a ?triple guarantee? that pensions are raised by the
higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%."

2) What does the government plan to do to pensions in 2012? Will the
link to increases in the cost of living even exist or will pensioners
be made to pay for the bankers' crisis?

3) Is it likely that the current policy towards teachers' pensions
will lead to a problem of recruitment in state schools?

4) How will it impact the public schools to which government ministers
send their children?

Youth unemployment

Conference notes the record levels of youth unemployment in the UK.
This is likely to have an effect of demotivating pupils. Many do not
see the point in working hard at school when they are more likely to
end up unemployed than otherwise.

We believe that the riots in the UK were a purely negative reaction to
the apparently hopeless situation young people find themselves in.
They show how dangerous the government policy of cutting welfare and
cutting jobs has been for the social fabric of the country.

We welcome the initiatives of Youth Fight for Jobs such as the Jarrow
crusade in 2011. We support this approach as a way of getting a
positive message to the young unemployed and to school pupils that
there is an alternative to demoralisation and an alternative to the
political system which has failed them so badly.

The Ark - new weblog

The Ark has a new blog. Its address is http://thearkhorsham.blogspot.com/

It can accept pictures and text. If you have something to say about
Ark just email it to derekmcmillan1951(at)yahoo.co.uk or to
lisa(at)thearkhorsham.org.uk and it can be forwarded to the blog at
the speed of light.

It has contact details for the Ark for those who want to help.

I do not have control over the content but if I can keep the spam at
bay I will be happy. This is something practical I was able to do for
Ark and I am feeling altogether too pleased with myself!

October 26 - March route confirmed

Join the Joint Union March and Lobby:
ASSEMBLE at midday, Victoria Gardens,Westminster, SW1;
MARCH to the Dept. of Education to hand in the mass petition.

All of the main teaching unions - ASCL, ATL, NAHT, NASUWT, NUT, UCAC
and UCU are backing this joint march & lobby on Wednesday October 26.
Every school is being asked to try and send at least one
representative to give Government a final warning - back off or face
the consequences.

The march gives us a chance to dust off the flags and banners from
June 30 once more. Media coverage of the event will be a timely
reminder to union members that are balloting to return their 'YES'
vote for action as well!

SIGN THE PETITION !
Even if you can't make it to London in half-term, make sure everyone
in your school signs the mass petition. More details on:
www.decentpensions.org.uk

Maude the Pension Pilferer

Maggie Thatcher was Maggie the Milk Snatcher - a byword for Tory
penny-pinching cruelty. Francis Maude will go down in history as Maude
the Pension Pilferer. If we let him get away with it.

The government has already reneged on a solemn and binding undertaking
(and such things are two a penny with politicians) to link pensions to
increases in the cost of living. By sleight of hand they have invented
a brand new measure of the cost of living and !surprise! it comes up
with a lower figure than the retail price index. Far from sympathising
with the pensioners the privileged and pampered politicians are
pinching their pennies.

The government has refused to negotiate in good faith with the public
sector unions. They behave as though attacking the unions were more
important than making a grown-up decision over public sector pensions.

All of the teacher unions are acting together to lobby parliament on
26th October. This is where Maude's union bashing has got him. Firstly
the ATL, most inoffensive and moderate of unions, has taken strike
action for the first time. Now the Secondary Head's union ACSL is on
the march. And if the Tory Party cannot depend on the ACSL they cannot
depend on anybody.

Maude should stop pretending to be a reincarnation of the blessed
Margaret and remember her ignominious defeat over the Poll Tax. It is
a pity the Labour leaders are so weak and willing because the Con
Dem's wouldn't last five minutes against a half-decent opposition.
Instead we have Ed the strike-breaker and a load of Balls about
supporting cuts from the shadowy Chancellor.

Trade Unions deserve better representation than Labour can provide -
we need a new workers' party.

Lobby MPs over pensions

At their meeting on 25 September the West Sussex Teachers Association
Executive agreed to support the lobby of Parliament on Wednesday, 26
October. The lobby is to protest against ruthless pension cuts in the
education sector. The unprecedented action is part of a joint campaign
by seven leading education unions to draw attention to the myths
surrounding the debate on pensions and to the severity of the cuts
being proposed.

Teachers are concerned that pension changes could cause a recruitment
crisis. Teachers and lecturers who are entering the profession, or who
have recently
entered, will face the greatest difficultly in increased costs for
their pensions. New teachers and lecturers may have large student
loans, which could be over £30,000. Teaching is one of the top
graduate employment destinations; this could change if the proposals
are introduced.

The lobby is being held during the half-term holiday to avoid
interrupting school children?s education and causing disruption for
parents. However the seven unions have not ruled out further
industrial action if the government continues to erode pensions.

Organisers of the campaign issued this statement:

The fact that thousands of teachers and lecturers from around the
country are giving up a day of their half-term holiday to come to
London to lobby MPs shows just how high feelings are running. The
profession is absolutely united in condemning the scandalous way
pensions are being ransacked to pay off the national debt.

The public has a right to know that cuts could ultimately affect the
quality of education for young people as high calibre graduates
re-think their career choice. We will also be challenging the myths
about how public sector pensions impact on taxpayers.

Teachers and lecturers never take strike action lightly and for this
reason the lobby has been organised during half term, to ensure there
is no disruption to pupils or parents. However if the government
continues to erode pensions, which they know are both affordable and
sustainable, teachers will be left with no option but to take further
action, including strike action.

We urge the government to listen to the message that this lobby sends.
Teachers cannot stand by and see their pensions eroded for purely
political reasons. It is entirely possible to avoid further disruption
but for that to happen the government needs to negotiate fairly.?

Details are available on the website:
http://www.decentpensions.org.uk/2011lobby

!"£$%^&*()

Shared resources on the TES website

Weekly report on your shared resource(s):

Views: 58
All time views: 544

Downloads: 47
All time downloads: 479

These are just worksheets (mainly Maths) uploaded to the TES website.
They are free. The idea is to avoid re-inventing the wheel every time
you want a worksheet on fraction equivalents etc.

My target is 500 downloads.

Wacko!

A survey conducted by TES has received massive publicity. It shows 49
percent of parents supporting corporal punishment in schools. The more
significant finding which the tabloids did not cover was that more
than eighty percent of parents opposed cutting education spending. I
can't imagine why the gutter press was not interested in that one!

I have taught successfully without the use of corporal punishment for
32 years. It is many years since corporal punishment was allowed in
British schools and in many cases the people who are condemning the
"feral youth" of today did not actually get caned themselves.

A sign of the times was when a private school wanted to utilise a
loophole in the law and carry on caning (sounds like a good film
title). They found the only place they could purchase canes was a sex
shop which could also have provided whips and bondage gear. When this
got into the papers they thought it was not quite the image they
wanted to portray to the public.

I did not go into teaching to hit children, however provocative the
little darlings may have been. I have however had (very rarely) to
physically restrain pupils from harming themselves or others. That is
not punishment. And interestingly the most difficult of the pupils I
have taught in all that time have been beaten by their parents. And a
fat lot of good it seemed to do them.

This does not surprise me. My brother was caned on his first day at
secondary school for "fidgeting". His school had substantially more
physical punishment than mine yet by any standard the behaviour at his
school was worse. Perhaps the culture of bullying was passed down from
teachers to pupils. I saw the school bully at my school outside the
head's office on numerous occasions. Did he cease being a bully? No he
became a bully with a sore backside.

There are some issues which the polls showing public support for
corporal punishment seem to avoid. An example would be ?would you be
happy for your daughter to be caned by a male teacher?? An
overwhelming "NO" shortly followed by "I'll have the law on yer!" would
be a probable response. Many people approve of beatings for other
people's children of course, but are not too happy about their own
being beaten.

The other issue involved in the question is corporal punishment for
girls which many parents find abhorrent. It means that exactly the
same offence by a boy would receive a caning and by a girl some other
punishment. How just is that?

I once had the privilege of being driven by a taxi driver who had an
opinion on education. His went a little further than most. He would
have a quiet word with any miscreants and tell them he knew where they
lived and he knew people who knew people who could set their house on
fire. What can you say in the face of such considered judgement? All I
did say was that I valued his input and of course I wouldn't dream of
telling him how to drive a cab.

If anyone chooses to suggest that my classroom must be a haven of
licensed wrongdoing, do spend five minutes there before drawing such a
rash conclusion. After all I would have sought an alternative
occupation if things were like that - you know an OFSTED inspector for
example :)

The caning issue is being used as a diversion from the real problem in
education: a problem correctly identified by parents who
overwhelmingly oppose the cuts. Gove and co really do want to turn
back the clock: unqualified teachers in dilapidated schools for the
poor and only the best for the rich. Of course many of the old
Etonians in the cabinet will have felt the cane. And it cannot be said
to have improved their behaviour one jot.

All of a Flather

Baroness Flather has claimed Pakistani and Bangladeshi families are
having lots of children in order to claim extra benefit payments. The
first female Asian peer (and a very good argument for the abolition of
the House of Lords) was branded "deeply irresponsible" and "out of
touch" following her comments.

However it has come to our notice that a woman living on state
benefits, a Mrs Windsor of Buckingham Palace, has had no less than
four children in order to increase the amount of civil list benefits.

Despite subsisting on state handouts, Mrs Windsor is rumoured to have
massive personal wealth stashed away and is thought to be the richest
woman in Europe. I think Baroness Flather could turn her attention on
this waste of public money.

Old soldiers want to be teachers

They might wish they were back in the trenches pdq!

The EDL are linked to Anders Behring Breivik.

Lily Allen wrote a song about the BNP called "F*ck you very much".
Perhaps more appropriate for the EDL is Imelda May's "I go with a
psycho".

The police however have believed the assurances of the EDL that mass
murderer Breivik really meant some other EDL not them!

Arming the cops?

Several members of my family live in London and I have been concerned for their welfare. I was not reassured when millionaire and failed Prime Minister Cameron jetted back to "deal with" the London riots. One of the soundbites he thought would play well was to authorise the use of plastic bullets. There are only a
couple of problems with that.

Police target practice on a black citizen lit the blue touchpaper in Tottenham. Was that such a good idea? Did it help the police to work with the community?

Plastic bullets in Northern Ireland resulted in 13 deaths, including those of seven children, and scores of serious, permanent injuries and disabilities. Is this all part of Cameron's "Big Society"?

And finally is it not likely that the plastic bullets for rioters today will be turned on peaceful protestors tomorrow? Giving police powers is easy. Taking them away is not.

Big Issue and a Big Hypocrite

Walk down any high street in this country and you will meet a homeless
person selling the Big Issue. If you want a living indictment of the
kind of society millionaires like Cameron defend you need look no
further.

And what is this? The current Big Issue is edited by David Cameron!
John Bird, who set out wanting to help the homeless now has them
forced to peddle the most disgusting Conservative Party propaganda. If
his name does not appear in the New Year's honours list - there just
ain't no justice!

In an editorial Bird lavishes praise on "the big society" in which
individuals can take the place of the state in helping out. Yet of
course this very magazine shows what is wrong with this approach. The
homeless are at the mercy of the whims of a philanthropist. If those
whims include grovelling to the Tory Party then the homeless have to
grovel. Refuse to sell the magazine and you don't eat tonight.

And one final question. If Cameron or Bird go into hospital will they
be happy for a volunteer to walk in off the street and operate on
them? If so I am prepared to give it a go. Where's my scalpel?

Reports of Murdoch's Death

While Murdoch was impersonating Uriah Heep on his 'umble
Commons appearance, reports of his death were appearing on
The Sun website. Apparently he was not intending to 'do a
Maxwell. In an ironic move, Hacker Murdoch had been hacked!

The 'hacktivists' responsible have now released email
addresses and mobile numbers of the 'know nothing'
executives of News International. It really would be pushing
the boundaries of hypocrisy for Hacker Murdoch to insist
that the full force of the law be used against them.

And that is exactly what he has done. Obviously the humble
pie disagreed with him

--
http://www.derekmcmillan.com

Oh my God they killed Harry Potter!

No spoilers!

The final Harry Potter film is a fast-paced adventure with references to every adventure you can imagine.

Look for echoes of Star Wars and in particular Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Gringotts, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even a reference to the story of how Horatius (or indeed Neville) held the bridge.

Watching Helena Bonham Carter go to pieces was entertaining. She is brilliantly unhinged in this (perhaps in RL, who knows?).

And the ending - well the epilogue is as sickening as in the book I'm afraid and I don't think of that as a spoiler. Why didn't somebody take JK Rowling aside and whisper about how dreadful it is? Perhaps her point was this is the end and there will be no more Harry Potter books....but the door is still open for a Potter Junior series!

Murdochgate

"‘Murdochgate’ is Britain’s Watergate. In politics, as in nature, the ‘butterfly effect’ operates. A seemingly small event – the famous metaphor of the flutter of a butterfly’s wings – can begin a chain of events resulting in massive unforeseen consequences.

In the case of the Watergate break-in, it led to the discrediting and downfall of Richard Nixon, the President of the most powerful nation on earth, the US. Cameron and his corrupt, rotten government deserve the same fate today. Watergate exposed the rottenness at the heart of the US administration and threatened the social system it was based upon, capitalism. "

Read more

A chatroom somewhere in Cyberspace

 A/S/L
 Pardon
 A/S/L Age, sex and location? Every heard of it?
 Oh LOL…. my name is Tracey I am 14 years old and I live in Canada
Hi Tracey
(snipped – long conversation about pony riding)

 Listen. You sound like a nice person Lesley and I see you are involved with adult MUDs. These miserable mothers won’t let me join because of my age and I wondered if….. Look do you mind me asking you this?
 Go on.
 That is very sweet of you, Lesley. Look I want to get onto Realms of Darkness and they wont let me on because I am underage, can you help me?
 Well why would I do that?
 Oh I will be very very grateful Lesley. You know what I mean.
 And all you want for me to do is propose you as a member of Realms of Darkness, the adult Multi User Domain?
 And you will be surprised how grateful I can be Lesley.
 Really.
* Really
* Well Okay then Tracey…

(Later)
.
*Hi, my name actually is Tracey but I am a 40 year old man working for the FBI in Seattle and you’re nicked sunshine.
* Hi Lesley here, Scotland Yard. You will be getting a call. Wasting Police Time. Ever heard of it?

(The BBC reported that law enforcement agencies were sending operatives into chat rooms to entrap paedophiles)

Defend the NHS

North Sussex and Surrey Trades Council launched a Coalition
to defend the NHS at a meeting on 06 July 2011.

Oliver Coxhead was elected as Chair
Derek Isaacs was elected as secretary.

Derek Isaacs was one of the first people to have his life saved by the new NHS in 1948. He had a playground accident
climbing the fence and was later taken to the hospital with an abcess which was growing inwards and would have
threatened his life.

However his mother didn't have to beg to a group of hard-nosed charity commissioners. The treatment was free for
the first time, so he was among the first of hundreds of thousands who owe their lives to the NHS.

People of sixty were old in 1948. The NHS has given us a new lease of life and that is why it is worthwhile for all of us
to defend it.

The government talks glibly about "reforms" of the NHS. In fact they propose to cut public provision and privatise
health care. The contents of your wallet will determine your treatment, not your medical need. You might as well say the German Air Force "reformed" Coventry.

The Coalition to defend the NHS will be meeting at St Johns Church Hall in central Crawley and the meetings will be
advertised on the blog.

To join the coalition contact crawleyagainstthecuts@yahoo.com
It could be the fight of your life.

Circus Clown in the West Sussex County Times

I would like to comment on Philip Circus's "non-political" rant about public sector pensions,

The average teachers' pension is 10,000 pounds. Excluding the very highest earners, the average public and civil service pension is £4200 a year. It would be an education for well-heeled lawyers to try living on that!

His argument is that because unscrupulous private employers have put their own profits first and robbed their employees of decent pensions, the public sector should follow suit. Presumably Robert Maxwell is his model employer here.

This is analagous to saying that three houses in my road have been broken into and robbed, so the only fair thing to do is to break into all the other houses too.

He ignores the fact that the government has failed to evaluate the Teachers Pension Fund in violation of an existing agreement, so all the figures about affordability or otherwise are just arrogant assertion. Do the sums first then give us the answers; not the other way round.

He ignores the fact that the government has already cut pensions, including police pensions incidentally, by sleight of hand. Violating another solemn undertaking to link public sector pensions to the retail price index the government has invented another measure of inflation which gives a lower figure. They only use this for pensioners;they still use the RPI for evaluating repayments on student loans.

And finally the whole tone of his article; "battling the unions" indeed. What next? Kettling pensioners? Thatcherism is so last century, Phil. Surely you remember that the blessed Margaret had completely routed and destroyed the trade unions thirty years ago. So how come they are still here and well-fed lawyers have to get apoplectic about them? Are there any grown up politicians out there who want to negotiate rather than bluffing?

The strike on June 30th

Work longer
Pay more
Get less money for your pension.

These politicians will promise you anything.


The American writer Frank Herbert defined democracy as a system in which the people distrust the government. And every day we find out a little more about why that is a fair definition as far as the solemn and binding agreement between teachers and the government over pensions is concerned.

Disabled people fighting the cuts

Disabled people are in the front line of the government's attacks on the welfare state. The government has made a critical error. One of many. They assumed that disabled people would be a pushover and they had no allies. Wrong on both counts.

Employment of disabled people is especially vulnerable to public sector job cuts. To add insult to injury the government is seeking to slash the invalidity benefit bill by using procedures to "prove" disabled people are scrounging and forcing them to work .... in non-existent jobs!

Sickened by the government's cowardly attack thousands of disabled people joined the TUC's march on 26 March and thousands took part in the "Hardest Hit" rally on 11 May.

The TUC disability conference on 25th and 26th May showed both the extent of the government's attack on disabled people and the courage and anger of the trade unionists who will stand in their path.

The Daily Mail attacks on benefit claimants echoing the Tories' lies in a cruder form have had the consequence of increasing hate crime against disabled people. The conference heard from John McArdle of Black Triangle on their work opposing defamation and victimisation of claimants.

It was guaranteed that any speaker who mentioned a public sector general strike would be applauded. John also suggested if Labour would not defend the National Health Service then unions should withdraw funding. He stopped short of saying what they should do to seek a political alternative but it was a very popular suggestion.

The NUT was there in force as you would expect and the project of a disabled history month championed by Richard Riesser received enthusiastic support.

IT was a very good conference and will inspire activists to forge the links between disabled groups and the mass of the trade union movement which can bring this government to its knees.

Pensions. How much will you use if you don't strike?

Their or his/her

I have just written a book review for Education Review. In it I had to face the problem of using "his or her" or "their".

It was once the case that "he" would be accepted. So that "Everyone in the nunnery was expected to do his best" was regarded as good grammar even if totally bonkers!
Now generally we have a choice:

Everyone wants to do his or her best.

or

Everyone wants to do their best.

Although the second sentence violates the general rule requiring agreement with the antecedents, many writers and speakers prefer to use forms of they because these forms are not gender specific. This is a common practice, but it is still criticized by grammatical purists.

And of course, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Walt Whitman and the King James' Bible all used "their" as a gender neutral singular or plural possessive pronoun.

So "their" it was :)

Upcoming event

Hypocrisy over Bin Laden

Nobody is all that sad Osama Bin Laden has kicked the bucket. It was however hypocritical of Orange Tony to boast that "anyone who kills innocent civilians will be hunted down and killed." Does that include you and your chum Bush by any chance Mr Blair?

It also seems a bit premature to claim the world is a safer place. Especially as the immediate response was to declare a "heightened state of security alert" which suggests less safe really!

From our Royal Correspondent

The Roman Emperors dealt with economic crisis with a policy of "bread and circuses". The Con Dems are determined to leave out the bread and just give us the circuses. Witness the media torrent of sickly sentimentality over the royal wedding.

Much has been made of Premier Cameron's deliberations over whether he looks better as a lounge lizard or a stuffed shirt. Serious stuff. It makes Cameron look a fool which is no bad thing but it diverts attention from the realities of
the state of the Con Dem Nation.

We should be grateful that although the country cannot afford health, welfare, education, libraries or pensions, at least we can afford for two overprivileged parasites to live like pigs in clover. It's romantic isn't it?

And of course the media Royal Correspondents stress that Middleton is "a commoner". About as common as hen's teeth in fact. The Middletons are from an elite every bit as remote from the common people as the Windsors. The significance of "blue blood" is that in the past the royals and the aristos had pale skin because they did not work outside like the peasantry so their blue veins were more likely to be visible. None of the millionaire Middletons has to turn an honest day's work and indeed they look to expand their business empire with their royal connections.

On the other hand it is important for the Windsors to bring new blue blood into the family because the perils of inbreeding are all too evident in Prince Charles and Prince Philip. Daft as a pair of Poundland brushes.

So watch the royal circus and enjoy it. After all you paid for it!

Derek McMillan
Royal Correspondent
Mid Sussex Socialist Party

Andrew Lansley Tosser - self-explanatory

China air overbooking

We turned up at the check-in to the unexpected news that despite having booked seats months ago there was only one seat on the plane. Then we had a lot of discussion with Mr Sorry
Whose only job was to say sorry to passengers and give us the number of head office. Head office is not available of course