Derek McMillan's weblog

Saturday, January 26, 2013

A close-run thing - Teachers' Union leaders want your views

How the NUT Executive voted on strike action. It was a close run thing! They would like to hear from rank and file NUT members about whether to call strike action in the summer term.

22 Against

1. CUMBRIA:
ALAN RUTTER a.rutter@executive.nut.org.uk

2. NORTH-EAST:
IAN GRAYSON i.grayson@executive.nut.org.uk

3. NORTH YORKS:
ANNE SWIFT a.swift@executive.nut.org.uk

4. BRADFORD/LEEDS:
HAZEL DANSON h.danson@executive.nut.org.uk

5. LANCASHIRE:
SIMON JONES s.jones@executive.nut.org.uk

6. and 7. MANCHESTER/ ROCHDALE/WIGAN:
JAY BARRY j.barry@executive.nut.org.uk
and
NICK WIGMORE n.wigmore@executive.nut.org.uk

8. CHESHIRE/MERSEYSIDE:
EDDIE RITSON e.ritson@executive.nut.org.uk

9. DERBYSHIRE:
JOHN HOLMES j.holmes@executive.nut.org.uk

10. SHROPS/STAFFS:
LINDA GOODWIN l.goodwin@executive.nut.org.uk

11. GLOUCS/WARKS:
JOHN PEMBERTHY j.pemberthy@executive.nut.org.uk

12. CAMBS/SUFFOLK:
GRAHAM WHITE g.white@executive.nut.org.uk

13. ESSEX:
JERRY GLAZIER j.glazier@executive.nut.org.uk

14. HANTS:
AMANDA MARTIN a.martin@executive.nut.org.uk

15. WEST SUSSEX/SURREY:
VERONICA PEPPIATT v.peppiatt@executive.nut.org.uk

16. EAST SUSSEX/KENT:
DAVE BRINSON d.brinson@executive.nut.org.uk

17. DORSET/SOMERSET:
ROBIN HEAD r.head@executive.nut.org.uk

18, 19, 20. WALES:
ANGELA JARDINE a.jardine@executive.nut.org.uk
NEIL FODEN n.foden@executive.nut.org.uk
CLARE JONES c.jones@executive.nut.org.uk

21. TREASURER:
IAN MURCH i.murch@executive.nut.org.uk

22. VICE-PRESIDENT:
BETH DAVIES b.davies@executive.nut.org.uk

20 FOR:

1. BRADFORD/LEEDS:
PATRICK MURPHY p.murphy@executive.nut.org.uk

2. BARNSLEY/SHEFFIELD:
ROY BOWSER r.bowser@executive.nut.org.uk

3. LEIECSTERSHIRE:
IAN LEAVER i.leaver@executive.nut.org.uk

4. and 5. WEST MIDLANDS:
TONY TONKS t.tonks@executive.nut.org.uk
ROGER KING r.king@executive.nut.org.uk

6. HERTS/BEDS:
HEATHER MCKENZIE h.mckenzie@executive.nut.org.uk

7. BUCKS/OXFORDSHIRE:
GAWAIN LITTLE g.little@executive.nut.org.uk

8. BRISTOL/WILTS:
ANNE LEMON a.lemon@executive.nut.org.uk

9. CORNWALL/DEVON:
BARRIE FROST b.frost@executive.nut.org.uk

10, 11. INNER LONDON:
MARTIN POWELL-DAVIES m.powell-davies@executive.nut.org.uk
ALEX KENNY a.kenny@executive.nut.org.uk

12,13,14,15 OUTER LONDON
DAVE HARVEY d.harvey@executive.nut.org.uk
DOMINIC BYRNE d.byrne@executive.nut.org.uk
NICK GRANT n.grant@executive.nut.org.uk
MARILYN BATER m.bater@executive.nut.org.uk

16,17,18 EQUALITIES SEATS:
MANDY HUDSON m.hudson@executive.nut.org.uk
ANNETTE PRYCE a.pryce@executive.nut.org.uk
BETTY JOSEPH b.joseph@executive.nut.org.uk

19. VICE-PRESIDENT:
MAX HYDE m.hyde@executive.nut.org.uk

20. EX-PRESIDENT:
JULIE LYON-TAYLOR j.lyon-taylor@executive.nut.org.uk

NOT VOTING as PRESIDENT:
MARILYN HARROP m.harrop@executive.nut.org.uk

Teachers' Union leaders want your views.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Goldman Sachs of cash - don't you dare tax us!

Goldman Sachs made up to an estimated quarter of a billion pounds from speculating on food prices including wheat, maize and soy. The bank is accused of contributing to a growing global food crisis.

Goldman Sachs created the first commodity index funds which allow huge amounts of money to be gambled on prices.

Anti-poverty campaign group the World Development Movement released the estimate following the publication of Goldman Sachs' 2012 results. The group is calling for tough rules to curb financial speculation on food, to prevent banks and hedge funds driving up prices.

The US has passed legislation to limit speculation, but the controls have not been implemented due to a legal challenge from Wall Street spearheaded by an organisation calling itself "The International Swaps and Derivatives Association" Readers will be amazed to learn that Goldman Sachs is a leading member of this Association. Similar legislation is on the table at the EU, but the UK government has so far opposed effective controls. Unsurprisingly Goldman Sachs has lobbied against controls in both the US and the EU and they carry a lot more clout than the starving millions.

With the cheek of the devil, Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein denounced Cameron's purely verbal attack on tax dodgers, saying that holding people up for criticism for their tax arrangements risked "criminalising every right-thinking person who organises his or her affairs in a sensible way.

They make money. People starve because they cannot afford food. But God forbid that anyone should suggest they pay tax!

Derek McMillan

Monday, January 07, 2013

Archbishop of Westminster

Once again the newspapers refer to the Archbishop of Westminster as "the leader of Britain's Catholics." According to the catechism, the leader of Catholics everywhere is Jesus Christ. He instructed us to 'love one another as I have loved you' and made no exceptions.

Blessed are the peacemakers (unless they're gay?)

Blessed are the poor (unless they're gay?)

Blessed are the meek (unless they're gay?)

Forgive those who trespass against you (unless they're gay?)

etc.

The situation in the church is in transition. Priests may not marry but there are half a dozen married priests in Arundel and Brighton. There are female chaplains and altar servers but not deacons and priests.

And one could say that Anglicans have problems of their own with gay priests required to be celebate whereas those who are straight are not. I couldn't possibly comment.

Friday, January 04, 2013

Lies, damned lies and benefit cuts!

The TUC has published research which shows government and media attacks on scroungers are based on lies.

On average members of the public think 41 percent of the welfare budget goes to the unemployed. This “fact” is used to justify attacking the unemployed as scroungers. In fact the figure is 3 percent. And any of the “hard-working taxpayers” of today could be denounced as the “workshy scroungers” of tomorrow if the recession throws them out of work.

Alongside the massive tax dodging of firms like Vodafone and Starbucks, the amount of benefit fraud is minuscule. The public are led to believe it is 27 percent of the welfare budget. The figure is actually less than one percent.

Alongside the legal and illegal expenses claims of MPs most fraud is tiny. This has not stopped the Tories of Westminster City Council from floating the idea of cutting benefit for people they deem too fat. And next week people they deem too thin or too tall no doubt. And what are these people supposed to do without benefits? “Die and reduce the surplus population” to quote that model of fiscal responsibility, Ebenezer Scrooge.

People in work are being asked to approve attacks on the unemployed because they get too much money. An example is an unemployed couple with two school-aged children. The approval is based on an imagined figure of £147. And what would people like to cut it to? Perhaps £111.45 which is the real figure.

The old adage would seem to be true. Figures can’t lie but liars can figure.

The Daily Express headlined “a new ice age”, “a cure for cancer” and “the economy is booming” in the same month. Why on earth believe it when they tell you 80 percent of benefit claimants are frauds?
The TUC has done a good job in commissioning this research. Public policy decisions should be based on the truth not convenient lies.

Tories wish to punish obesity

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Shanghaied by HSBC

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) - chiefly famous for money-laundering - have also shanghaied millions of pounds from ordinary customers by a bit of jiggery pokery with Cash Machines.

If you accidentally leave your money in an ATM for about 30 seconds, the machine takes the money back and anyone would expect that the bank would refund the money to their account. RBS and HSBC do not think like that.

For years they have just quietly kept the money unless the customer specifically complains to them. HSBC was the last major bank to reluctantly and grudgingly agree to give ordinary customers their
money back.

With astonishing bravado they have insisted customers "don't call us -we have all the information to sort this out!"In other words it was not a mistake or oversight, they knew all about it.

If you or I tried a stunt like that we would be looking at the inside of a prison cell. Are the banks above the law?

Isn't it nice to know our money is safe in their hands?

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Diary of a Common Soldier

I didn't know my father very well. He died when I was seven. However, I did get to know the young man who was a common soldier in the Second World War through reading his diary.
This diary is now available on Kindle thanks to my sister, the writer Janice Robinson. In the introduction there is the following story which my mother always repeated as a dire warning against being "too clever"

"My dad, F R McMillan, known to all but the family as "Mac" was an ordinary sort of chap. During the depression in the 1930s he took any job he could get and when he received his call-up papers in June 1940, he was a baker's roundsman.

"Being of a sarcastic nature, when asked if he wanted to go into the Navy or the RAF, he replied, "Is that all you have to offer?" And he was promptly sent into the Army."

Read his story.
Click on the link below:

Diary of a Common Soldier

Friday, December 21, 2012

STOPP Gove's performance pay chicanery

Only obedient teachers will be getting pay rises in future if Gove gets his way. The union was founded to oppose performance related pay.

There is a facebook page for those who want to comment on Gove's plans and the union's response.

Click here

Monday, December 10, 2012

ASOSA

ASOSA - yet another acronym to learn. This one refers to "Action Short of Strike Action." LANAC is the "Local Associations for National Action Campaign" which held a conference on 8th December in Leicester I attended with Mark Sandell who was suffering from the worst cold in history.

The LANAC conference was an opportunity to exchange experiences of Action Short of Strike Action. Although there are schools with good union organisation where the union group did not have to take action, the consensus was that ASOSA was giving more confidence to rank and file members of the union.

In some cases the union has had to threaten strike action to get recalcitrant heads to comply. This has generally been enough. In one case the union had had to take escalating strike action – one, two and three days before a head was persuaded to see sense. The consequence was that the union group was stronger at the end of it. The head had assumed the strike action would tail off. On the contrary, the picket line was bigger each time and attendance at union meetings went up.

The nature of the NUT ballot was that strike action could be taken at short notice so heads could not make use of delay to undermine the action.

This squares with the reports given to NUT South East Regional Committee in November.

Gove is threatening to cut teachers' pay still further with all pay rises being for “nice” teachers Some of the appalling bullying heads we have heard of will be the people who decide who's naughty or nice.

Moreover schools which are in dire financial straits may be forced to conclude that they have no nice teachers because they cannot afford to pay them!

Under these circumstances it is likely that there will have to be strike action. There was some discussion over whether this will require another ballot. Nevertheless there was a mood of confidence that the union will have to proceed to “phase two” and the NASUWT may be forced to the same conclusion.

Derek McMillan December 10^th 2012

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

UKIP want Gove for PM. God help us!

The rising popularity and respectibility of UKIP shows just how fed up with the mainstream political parties people must be. You would have to be pretty desperate to support a man who complains about the EU gravy train then claims £2 million in expenses

One Rotheram voter is quoted in The Guardian "What d'you call him? Le Fage? I saw him on the telly. He should be a comedian." which is about right.

But Labour's disgusting record of supporting cuts and lining their own pockets is unattractive to working class voters. The manufactured story about parents being unable to foster children because they are racist and this being linked to their UKIP membership played right into the hands of the UKIP comedians.

If you listen for five minutes to Farage you realise that a UKIP/Conservative coalition would not be a laughing matter. More tax cuts for the rich and more welfare cuts for the 99 percent, all washed down with a dose of rage against immigrants. The fact they want Gove as leader tells you all you need to know!

Derek McMillan

Monday, November 26, 2012

French page on Amazon

Amazon asked me to make a page for Amazon.fr . I have always been favourably impressed with the attitude of French people towards my attempts to speak their language. It was certainly a lot nicer than the response of my French teacher :)

So here it is

Amazon m'a demandé de faire une page pour Amazon.fr. J'ai toujours été favorablement impressionné par l'attitude des Français envers mes tentatives de parler leur langue. Il était certainement beaucoup plus agréable que la réponse de mon professeur de français

Monday, November 19, 2012

Stories from the Ark

As part of the adult literacy work undertaken by The Ark, one of our students is writing a story which is being blogged here

1) This story is being written using a laptop so that spelling mistakes can be corrected quickly and the final result looks OK.

2) Other people are involed in the story because there is an ongoing discussion about the narrative.

3) This is a really good way of boosting confidence and presenting a story to an audience.
People have many different routes into adult literacy but this kind of narrative is just one of them.

4) The problem with a lot of "easy" books is that they are aimed at children. This is not a children's narrative!

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Nationwide proud to be the same?

I always liked that Nationwide advert, I expect you remember it, "we wont charge you for using your card abroad." I was disappointed with the commission charges for foreign travel which my current account attracted. I am always telling people how good Nationwide is.

Goodbye Mitt

Listening to the vicious little Republican "analyst" used by the BBC to provide "balance". He was named after that river that runs through Egypt and it seemed he was in denial himself.

However if this is what Republicans sound like in defeat, imagine how obnoxious they would be in victory. Perhaps it is that thought that has kept Obama in power.

Wave goodbye to the oven glove. People obviously thought Obama was the lesser evil.

Monday, October 29, 2012

South African Miners' leader at Socialism 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

The six faces of Lara Croft

Letters to Lara

Now on Kindle
Click here
The "Letters to Lara" project took about a year. Pupils at a school in Sussex wrote letters to Lara Croft. This is not all that different from a frequent activity in English Literature - pupils writing to a character in a novel or play.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Gove 's apology is not enough

Michael Gove has written an apology to his French teacher in this
week's Radio Times. How amusing. Apparently he was a revolting
individual in those days too.

Whenever a secretary of state for education goes, teachers heave a
sigh of relief and pray to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes,
that the next one will be better.

We are still praying. Each one has new and wonderful "initiatives"
which are brought in without consulting teachers or parents and
usually against the advice of all education practitioners. Gove's
"Free School" fiasco is a case in point.

I am very pleased that Gove has apologised to his French teacher,
albeit thirty years late. I suppose that means that the rest of us
will just have to wait another thirty years. We won't all live that
long.

In any case, as any teacher can tell you, an apology is meaningless without a change in behaviour.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Austerity isn't working

The government response to the TUC march on 20th October was "we don't care what you plebs think, we won't change our brilliant policy." So no surprises there then. This means that Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow may well get their way and precipitate a general strike. See if the patricians will listen then :)

Commentators have noted that Miliband was booed when he tried to turn an anti-cuts rally into a pro-cuts rally. People are not keen on "nice Labour cuts" - or as one banner said "Labour = same cuts with a different knife".

The trade unions should stop throwing good money after bad Labour policies and fight for the policies they believe in:

* make the rich pay for the crisis they caused

* give the people the welfare state they deserve.

No more kowtowing to polticians. People should not fear their governments. Perhaps it is time governments started to fear the people.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Starbucks

Try going into a Starbucks and refusing to pay for your coffee. My guess is that you would soon find the long arm of the law on your shoulder. They would not tolerate anything so thoroughly dishonest.

However, although Starbucks have been regularly telling their investors that the UK business is highly profitable, they have been telling the taxman a different story. Reuters has compared Starbucks' two versions of events thus: "To its investors, it sells an espresso - strong and vibrant. The UK taxman gets a watered-down Americano." Indeed they have been legitimately claiming that their business in the UK shows a loss while raking in massive profits.

Household names like Starbucks and most famously Vodafone have been using accounting trickery which would get them labelled scroungers if they were unemployed or disabled.

But have no fear. Liberal Democrat Danny Alexander boasted that he intended to recruit a hundred more Revenue men to crack down on tax evasion. What he did not boast about was the fact that 1500 Revenue men and women have been sacked since this government was elected. This is taking disingenuous mendacity to an Olympic standard.

Derek McMillan
Mid-Sussex Socialist Party

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http://classroomteachermanual.blogspot.com

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Academy Thought Control

How would Govey react if a local authority school were to insist that all governors support comprehensive education? I imagine he would turn fifty shades of blue and explode.

However, Academies are quite within their rights to sack governors who do not fulfil the person specification "fully supports academy status".

This came to light at St Bede's School in Cambridge where this clauise was used to remove a long-standing governor and trade unionist.

Curiously another person specification for governors was "to be able to think critically." So it seems that on planet Gove you can only think critically if you agree with the Academy program.