This Writer has been laid low with Lurgi over the weekend, so I’m looking to others to sustain This Site.
First up is my brother David, who runs Beastrabban\’s Weblog.
He’s not happy with Keir Starmer at all – and has published a 25-minute YouTube video explaining his very good reasons for wanting left-wing voters in Starmer’s Holborn & St Pancras constituency to vote for other left-wing parties, the Monster Raving Loonies or single-issue candidates rather than helping Starmer bring his brand of Conservatism into 10 Downing Street.
That’s right – Starmer is a Conservative and you need to make sure everybody knows it. If anything, he is more right-wing than Rishi Sunak. And that means he’s bad for you.
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At breaking point: the UK’s National Health Service.
Ambulance workers and nurses are both set to go on strike on 6 February – the first time they’ve taken industrial action simultaneously. There are fears it could pose a “significant challenge” for the NHS.
Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, has said the proposed walkouts are a “huge concern”.
She said: “Trusts have been warning for months that coordinated strikes were a possibility if the government and unions failed to reach an early agreement on this year’s pay award.”
Ms Cordery urged ministers to “get round the table with the unions urgently to deal with the key issue of pay for this financial year, otherwise there is no light at the end of the tunnel”.
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One of the UK’s biggest trade unions – UNISON – has announced ambulance workers intend to take strike action before Christmas.
Here are details from Sky News:
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Liz Truss: the queen of cheese who warned that Brexit will seriously harm the UK is now using it to seriously harm the people of the UK.
What liars these Tories are!
They’ve had plans to strip you of your rights – both at work and as human beings – since at least as early as 2014.
Boris Johnson promised that leaving the European Union would not be used as a means to achieve that end – but it seems Liz Truss is switching straight back to the original plan.
She’s using the EU as a scapegoat for the UK’s current economic woes – Tory “divide and rule” tactics once again – and claiming that increasing the number of hours you may legally be asked to work every week, while decreasing the number of days’ holiday you must be offered per year, will help us afford the increased cost of living.
Of course, it won’t.
You’ll get no extra money for your extra time, because Truss’s Tory donors will take any extra profits for themselves.
Oh, and Truss wants to target the trade unions, to ensure that you can’t fight this racket.
Peter Stefanovic, of the CWU, says you need to act against this now – and he’s right. Watch his video:
*THIS IS IMPORTANT*
Boris Johnson repeatedly denied that leaving the EU would be used as a means to strip workers of their rights
Now it seems doing just that will be one of Liz Truss’s number one priorities
Will you let Truss work you into the ground to make cash for her super-rich buddies?
Or will you stand up for what should be yours by right? It’s up to you.
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Trash talker: if Liz Truss thinks people in the UK don’t work hard simply to make a living, she needs to get her head out of whatever dark cavity it has been inhabiting for the last 12 years.
This woman is a disgrace to the United Kingdom. She should not be in politics, let alone in the running to be prime minister.
I refer, of course, to Liz Truss, a co-author of the infamous Britannia Unchained, a book that claimed the British were “among the worst idlers in the world”.
She has disowned that passage, even though her status as co-author suggests endorsement of it, laying the blame for it on Dominic Raab, who at the time it was published was among the worst idlers in Parliament, with one of the lowest attendance records of any MP. He’s now Deputy Prime Minister, indicating that scum rises.
But she can’t disown the words she spoke in a leaked audio recording from a few years ago, when she was Chief Secretary to the Treasury:
In the clip, leaked to The Guardian, Ms Truss said those outside London were less likely to be hard workers.
She said British workers as a whole also lacked the “skill and application” of foreign rivals, specifically those in China.
Ms Truss said it was “partly a mindset or attitude thing” and there seemed little desire to change the working culture so the UK could become more prosperous.
At the time she spoke those words, the UK’s economy was the second most prosperous in Europe. The money just didn’t trickle down to the people who created it (the workers) due to Tory policies.
This Writer can’t speak for large masses of UK-based workers; I can only really discuss my own experience of working here.
So let’s see: before I set up Vox Political, I spent three and a half years working for a local daily newspaper while also acting as carer for Mrs Mike who (famously, to long-term readers of This Site) has long-term illnesses and disabilities.
I have continued to act as her carer throughout the nearly 11 years that VP has been running. At its height, the site had more than 178,000 hits in a single day and I would suggest achieving that required a certain application.
During the time I was caring for Mrs Mike and running Vox Political, I have also helped run two charities, being vice-chair of one for several years, and I am currently the chair of another, that runs a cultural festival here in Mid Wales.
I spent two years on a successful campaign to force the Tory government to publish figures showing that thousands of people who had claimed sickness benefits but were thrown off them had subsequently died, indicating that the decision to sanction them was wrong.
I also had to work hard to prevent the Department for Work and Pensions from cutting off Mrs Mike’s benefit. Its representatives eventually admitted that they had mis-categorised her.
Oh, and I’ve also been a member of several local bands. Well, everybody has to relax somehow – and local audiences seem to enjoy the music.
Does that little list suggest a “lack of application” to you?
If I was feeling as uncharitable as Truss, I would suggest the reason she has spent so long sh*t-talking working people is because she’s had her head stuck where the sun doesn’t shine.
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Some of us are old enough to remember the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-9 that led to the toppling of a Labour government and the installation of Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.
So I’m delighted that the tables are turned and the Tories are getting the same treatment.
Here’s the gist:
London bus drivers have joined the UK’s “summer of discontent” and announced a strike for 19 and 20 August following a dispute over salaries.
The union Unite said more than 1,600 of its members working for bus operator London United will join the walkout after the company’s parent, RATP Dev Transit, offered a 7.8 pay increase over this year and next.
The walkout is expected to create maximum disruption, as it will coincide with both the TfL and national railway strike.
It’s another step in the right direction but will the UK’s Tory government pay attention to anything less than a national strike?
And, the way matters are progressing, how long will it be before that happens?
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The Tory two-fingered salute: this time it’s for working people across the UK who thought the lying Boris Johnson was ever going to offer them a fair deal.
Simple answer: it’s what they do.
Unions and industry groups were incensed earlier this week when they discovered that the Tory government has not included an Employment Bill to protect workers’ rights in plans for the new Parliamentary session.
Why were they so upset?
Because the Tories had promised it, that’s why!
Boris Johnson had responded to concerns that workers’ rights could be watered down after the UK left the EU, and worries about treatment of employees in the gig economy with a pledge to enshrine rights in law. That was in 2019.
Since then, nothing.
According to the BBC,
When first announced, the bill had promised:
the creation of a single enforcement body, offering greater protections for workers
making sure that tips left for workers go to them in full
all workers would have the right to ask for a more predictable contract
redundancy protections would be extended to prevent pregnancy and maternity discrimination
parents allowed to take extended leave for neonatal care
entitlement to one week’s leave for unpaid carers
subject to consultation, the bill also proposed making flexible working the default unless employers have good reason not to.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the lack of the Employment Bill in Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech meant “vital rights that ministers had promised – like default flexible working, fair tips and protection from pregnancy discrimination – risk being ditched for good”.
She claimed ministers had “sent a signal that they are happy for rogue employers to ride roughshod over workers’ rights,” adding it would see “bad bosses celebrating”.
She’s not wrong!
But then, working people and their representatives were wrong ever to believe that Boris Johnson and his gang of asset-strippers and exploiters would ever legislate to ensure proper treatment for them.
In short, it seems clear that the promise of an Employment Bill was another Boris Johnson lie. We should have treated it as such from the start.
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For the many? It seems “the many” are being pushed out of the Labour Party – unless they are friends of Keir Starmer.
Pretty soon, the only people allowed to be members of the Labour Party will be those in Keir Starmer’s inner circle.
That’s why the party leadership is tailoring its conditions for proscribing members – automatically excluding them in retrospect for activities with outside or formerly-affiliated organisations – to ensure the current leader’s friends don’t suffer the effects meant for others.
The latest groups to be proscribed are Labour Left Alliance (LLA), Socialist Labour Network and the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) – but there is a singular exception:
Regarding AWL, members are excluded for participating in events including the annual conference except for debating with members of the organisation.
This is because Luke Akehurst, secretary of the far-right Labour First, has taken part in such an event and Starmer doesn’t want to lose him.
Luke’s a member of the club, you see. He gets a free pass. You don’t.
Steve Walker of the Skwawkbox blog is right: “The shameless hypocrisy of the Labour right knows no bounds. Just as Starmer’s ‘zero tolerance of antisemitism’ turned out to mean ‘a lot of tolerance for antisemitism as long as it’s a right-winger’, it was always clear that expulsion rules were only being applied to left-wingers.
“But now those rules are being specifically written to ensure that favoured henchmen are explicitly exempt – and only those favoured henchmen.”
And Labour MP Clive Lewis admitted that the move shows his own party sliding into authoritarianism and a “crisis of democracy”:
Proscription lists; mass expulsions; the centralisation of power. It’s naive to think the ‘crisis of democracy’ and the slide to authoritarianism afflicting western polities won’t affect our own political institutions. https://t.co/v5EV3TiCYJ
Simply put, the Labour Party is turning into a members-only club for friends of Keir Starmer.
They get all the perks.
If you’re a socialist and you’re still a member of that party, then get used to dreaming about democracy – because you’re never going to have it again.
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Labour’s worst leader: Starmer keeps screwing up so This Site will keep using this image.
The Communications Workers Union (CWU) has withdrawn its support from Keir Starmer.
A special conference of the union voted to provide only its affiliation fee to the national Labour Party from now on:
CWU Special Conference has just voted to suspend donations to the national Labour Party above our affiliation fee. As a trade union we will only work with those in the Party who are interested in delivering for our members. It’s time to get back out into our communities.
The union’s general secretary, Dave Ward, said the union would focus on individual Labour members who support its own aims: “In focusing our political resources on those in Labour who are really up for delivering for our members we are looking beyond the factional war being waged by an out-of-touch Westminster politics.
“This is a positive step for our union and a real offer to those in Labour who want to change things on the ground.”
It’s another defeat for Keir Starmer, who must now take the financial hit implied by the loss of the union’s funding. Coming on top of the #LabourDataBreach this puts his further-right-wing-than-the-Tories party in financial danger.
Too bad:
The CWU has today joined Unite in reducing funding for Labour, already suffering financial stress after the departure of 100,000+ members. That's part of the price of moving right.
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BFAWU president Ian Hodson: the union has disaffiliated from Labour – the party it helped create – after Starmer’s rabble threatened to expel him over a connection with a proscribed organisation.
One of the trade unions that founded the Labour Party has disaffiliated from it – in disgust at Keir Starmer’s insistence on waging a “factional internal war” instead of opposing Boris Johnson’s far-right government.
The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) had said it would hold a vote on disaffiliation after Labour threatened to expel its national president, Ian Hodson, over connections with one of the organisations that Starmer’s Labour recently proscribed for no very good reason.
Hodson had dealings with Labour Against the Witchhunt – a support organisation for party members falsely accused of anti-Semitism by Keir Starmer’s auto-guilting disciplinary machine – until 2017.
It was proscribed by Starmer’s perversion of the party earlier this year, making any action against Hodson retrospective – and therefore unreasonable.
The union had planned a disaffiliation vote to coincide with Starmer’s speech at the Labour conference in Brighton this week – but the announcement was made the day before, heaping humiliation on the party’s non-leader.
He is the only Labour leader ever to drive away one of the organisations that helped found the party.
In a statement, the union made its reasoning clear [boldings mine]:
“We need footballers to campaign to ensure our schoolchildren get a hot meal. Workers in our sector, who keep the nation fed, are relying on charity and good will from family and friends to put food on their tables. They rely on help to feed their families, with 7.5% relying on food banks, according to our recent survey.
“But instead of concentrating on these issues we have a factional internal war led by the leadership. We have a real crisis in the country and instead of leadership, the party’s leader chooses to divide the trade unions and the membership by proposing changes to the way elections for his successor will take place.
“We don’t see that as a political party with any expectations of winning an election. It’s just the leader trying to secure the right wing faction’s chosen successor.
“The decision taken by our delegates doesn’t mean we are leaving the political scene; it means we will become more political and we will ensure our members’ political voice is heard as we did when we started the campaign for £10 per hour in 2014.
“Today we want to see £15 per hour for all workers, the abolition of zero hours contracts and ending discrimination of young people by dispensing with youth rates.
“The BFAWU will not be bullied by bosses or politicians. When you pick on one of us you take on all of us. That’s what solidarity means.”
In the light of this announcement, Keir Starmer should be dreading the moment when he takes the stage for his speech.
He was probably hoping for applause – but now he’ll be lucky to avoid catcalls. Personally, This Writer would pelt him with rotten vegetables.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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