After the national strike: do unions need to shift tactics?
Yesterday I didn’t go on a march. Instead, in semi-journalist mode, I went round pickets in my area, having a bit of chat with those who were left, offering a tenner for the strike fund. Those left behind reported that most had gone off to the marches and rallies, some to Wigan, some to Liverpool.
They know that the battle lines have now been drawn; if we lose this battle, then we’re likely to lose the war.
The overall impression I took from yesterday is that we may be getting our tactics very wrong for the war of attrition to come, and that we need to pay attention now to the basics of strike organisaton.
continue reading… »
Paralympics targeted by disabled in Dec. actions
Disability activists across the UK are launching a month-long ‘Festive Action Against ATOS and Benefit Cuts’ from today.
The month of actions and demonstrations kick off today with a protest at LSE university where cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith will give a speech in the evening.
The activists say:
With thousands to face homelessness in the New Year due to housing benefit cuts, the harassment and further impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of disabled people due to punitive ‘assessments’, the continued persecution of people on sickness benefits, soaring unemployment and forced labour in the name of Workfare, a truly Victorian Christmas is on the cards for millions of us.
The Welfare Reform Bill will see millions of disabled people forced into a similar, if not identical, testing regime for the new Personal Independence Payment that has tragically led to suicides amongst people already forced to undertake Atos’ Work Capability Assessments
On 3rd December disability activists will protest against the disability assessment company ATOS outside the Paralympic Test Event.
There is anger at allowing ATOS to sponsor the Paralympics
See the facebook page for more details.
False Economy first birthday tonight
The excellent anti-cuts campaigning site False Economy hosts its first birthday party, and fundraiser, tonight!
Come and join us!
Throw the old rule books out of the window
I doesn’t need repeating that bloggers at Liberal Conspiracy (and elsewhere on the left) have been saying for years that massive cuts to public spending during the deepest recession in 80 years was a manifestly idiotic idea. In April, Duncan Weldon even went as far as predicting a double-dip recession.
I say this not to gloat about our predictive capabilities – millions of people are suffering thanks to Osborne’s idiocy – but to try and think ahead about what happens now.
Throw out the old rule-books of politics and economics – what pretty much everyone now predicts has never happened in Britain in recent memory.
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Daily Mail blames strikers for injured student
The Daily Mail’s contempt for teachers knows no bounds.
In a news story today, the Daily Mail blames striking teachers for an student being injured.
—
How in the world is this the fault of striking teachers?
And this isn’t the first time either the Daily Mail has tried this trick.
In July the Mail tried to blame striking teachers for the death of a girl because a tree branch fell on her.
But the Mail faced a backlash from its own commenters then and was forced to change the article’s headline. It seems they haven’t learnt anything.
Osborne is damned by his own words
David Cameron and George Osborne will pretend that things are still going according to plan, but their own words in the past betray this.
This is what they said on the deficit:
“In five years’ time, we will have balanced the books. The sharp tax rises and huge interest rates you feared, the uncertainty you felt – these are things you no longer need to worry about. With our Budget in June and the Comprehensive Spending Review last week, we took Britain out of the danger zone.”
– David Cameron, 25 October 2010
“I inherited, as chancellor, the largest budget deficit in the G-20. And we’ve taken a series of steps, increased some taxes, consumption taxes, had some cuts in public expenditure, which have put us on a path to eliminate the deficit in a period of four years.”
…
“Well, what I’ve said is, we’ve set out a credible fiscal plan. We are aiming to eliminate the current structural budget deficit by the year 2014/15, one year earlier than the mandate that I’ve established requires. So we’ve built some caution in there.”
– George Osborne, CNBC News, 1 December 2011
“Cable, one of five Liberal Democrat ministers in the cabinet, said it was realistic for the coalition to eradicate the structural deficit by the end of this parliament, adding ‘our credibility hinges on it’.”
– The Guardian, 20 May 2011
“So actually, when you strip away all the fury and the accusations and counter-accusations, the debate is about whether you deal with this deficit in five years or in seven years, I think it is better to do it in five years and I don’t think there is any merit in tearing off the plaster that much more slowly…”
– Nick Clegg, 5 Live, 23 January 2011
“I set out a fiscal mandate, a target for the public finances if you like to bring the current budget into balance, deal with this structural deficit, that is the bit that doesn’t go away when the economy grows, and I aim to meet that a year earlier than my target, for reasons of caution in 2014/2015 so it is a four year plan I have set out, some of the news coverage suggests it all takes place over night, it doesn’t take place over night it is a four year plan.”
– George Osborne, Today Programme, 21 October 2010
The question is – will the media hold them to account?
Stating the obvious on the economy
The reality as as Robert Skidelsky said in the Guardian yesterday morning:
The intellectual debate between George Osborne and his critics hinges on this single point: what is it that makes a deficit-reduction programme “credible”?
Let’s start with the theory of the matter. “Look after unemployment,”JM Keynes said, “and the budget will look after itself.” This was a neat way of saying that a credible deficit reduction plan depends on growth.
There are four engines for growth, and no more.
continue reading… »
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» Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
» Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
» There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
» On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
» Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
» By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
» The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
» Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
» The US is now a model for the Eurozone to save itself
» The IMF plan to revive the economy doesn’t go far enough
» The Boris brand is weaker than his friends think
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