Month: July 2016

These promises are a clear response to Owen Smith’s policies on pay negotiation and zero-hours contracts. Is the collective bargaining plan any good? This Writer doesn’t know. If any experts on employment law are among our readership, feel free to debate the proposal – and Owen Smith’s alternatives – here. His plan to eradicate zero-hours contracts seems streets ahead of Mr Smith’s ‘single-hour contracts’ idea, though. Jeremy Corbyn would require companies with more than 250 employees to accept new industrial laws under which they would have to recognise a specific…

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The launch of Theresa May’s campaign against modern slavery is laudable – until you realise there is one form of slavery she actively promotes. You might say that wage slavery does not involve anything like the kind of abuse that is associated with the other forced workers – but you’d probably be wrong. As Mrs May said herself, “People are enduring experiences that are simply horrifying in their inhumanity” – and that goes for people who are forced to seek paid work of the most demeaning kinds, simply to make…

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This is a weird one. It seems that Labour Party officials have been trying to dictate to Jeremy Corbyn when he can campaign and when he must pander to the TV media – and he’s not playing their game. He has agreed to several televised hustings events but has turned down others because he has other events planned – for example he is due to speak in Liverpool on Monday when Channel 4 wanted to screen a debate. Channel 4 News seems completely unperturbed about Mr Corbyn’s refusal to attend…

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This is an update to a report earlier that Labour rebels were considering launching a ‘party-within-a-party’, denying Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and mounting legal action to take the party’s name and financial assets. Mr Corbyn has responded as follows: [Jeremy] Corbyn [has] warned rebel MPs they will never be able to take the Labour party’s name if they force a split. Responding to reports in the Daily Telegraph that dissenting MPs are preparing to elect their own leader and launch a legal challenge for the party’s name and assets if Smith…

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Sharon Hodgson is the latest in the line of former shadow ministers to provide an unconvincing explanation for her resignation – more than a month after she handed in her notice. She follows several others, including Lilian Greenwood and Thangam Debbonaire, who have seen fit to tell us Jeremy Corbyn is a poor leader who did not listen to his shadow cabinet and announced policies without consulting them. It isn’t convincing, because the overall effect is of a co-ordinated smear campaign, with statements released at intervals, all very similar in…

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If the Home Office is refusing to reveal the number of people who have been raped while waiting for a judgement on an asylum claim, we can conclude that it has definitely happened at least once. Once is far too often. Responsibility can only lie with the organisation running the centre; whether the perpetrator was a detainee or a member of staff, Serco should have prevented it. But the Home Office refuses to answer the question, for fear of harming Serco’s “commercial interests”. That is not acceptable. As Home Secretary while…

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The cost of this legal battle is worth discovering – although we’ll probably have to launch Freedom of Information requests at the DWP and the ICO to find out. In the meantime, here’s the (very long) list of companies that took advantage of taxpayer-funded workers courtesy of the DWP. Feel free to use the information in whatever way you see fit. 1. African Childrens Fund 2. Abacus Children’s Wear 3. ABCAL 4. Ability 5. Ace of Clubs Charity Shop 6. Acorns 7. Action for Disability 8. Action Housing 9. Active…

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The concept of splitting the Labour Party if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as leader isn’t new. It simply seems hopelessly naïve. They make too many baseless assumptions. Sure, the mutineers could elect their own leader and form their own party-within-a-party, if they really wanted to disrupt opposition to the Conservative Government. Such a plan certainly would not strengthen opposition to the Tories, and would fuel claims that the so-called ‘moderates’ behind the plot against Corbyn really are ‘Red Tory’ infiltrators who had joined Labour to destroy it. Sure, they could…

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We all know the campaign to elect Owen Smith as the new leader of the Labour Party isn’t going well – so his supporters are resorting to anti-democratic, dirty tricks to make it seem he is doing better. Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee has given each local party the option of nominating a candidate through a members’ vote or one by the party’s general committee. So far, it seems 76 Constituency Labour Parties have held meetings and declared the results which are: Jeremy Corbyn – 57; Owen Smith – 15; Neutral – 4.…

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It is terrifying that our Conservative government supports a school system that allows teachers to behave in this way. Michaela Free School in Wembley, London, has caused controversy by putting pupils into ‘lunch isolation’ if parents fail to pay for their children’s school meals. According to the school, pupils in lunch isolation “will receive a sandwich and a piece of fruit only. They will spend the entire 60-minute period in lunch isolation. Only when the entire outstanding amount is paid in full will they be allowed into family lunch with…

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