Morning Star conference tomorrow

Morning Star’s Surviving Capitalism’s crisis

Saturday, 20 June 2009

Congress House,

Great Russell Street

London WC1

9.30am ­ -  4:30pm

John McDonnell is a leading a workshop in the afternoon on welfare reform.

I will be going

What’s the odds of that happening..?!

Sitting on the train this morning staring out of the window thinking what a lovely warm sunny day and I am stuck indoors coupled with further miserable thoughts like why the hell did Labour members in Salford decide to keep Blears…??

Then this bloke got on the train, sat opposite me, opened his bag and pulled a copy of Labour Briefing out of it. He then proceeded to flick through it, and settled on an article…..written by myself.

I could tell as I kinda know the outline of themes for Briefing, and in which order they go…not that I memorise the order that would be rather sad, just that I see the page plan of each edition. Also I recognised the pic I had taken for the article.

Sacre bleu! Someone Idon’t recognise is reading my piece..

Is it etiquette to bring attention to yourself by leaning forward exclaiming, ‘I say, comrade,but that’s my article you are seemingly engrossed in…fabulous article, don’cha think’?

 But instead I sat there gawping at the bloke reading my article saying nothing but thinking..’What’s the odds of that happening’?

Tasers: lethal weapons

We have seen the appalling and shocking footage this week of a man being tasered in Nottingham. And last Friday a man in Australia died after being tasered. The taser used on Antonio Galeano was fired 28 times! He died 15 minutes later. And frankly I cannot imagine the agony the man experienced having something like 50,ooo volts fired into him….

Recently, an estimated $10million  was allocated for taser guns in New South Wales. And activists have called for the ban in light of this recent death. They are lethal weapons. Globally, cops are showing themselves (again) as brutal violent bullies enforcing their brand of thuggery and abuse. The violence displayed by the cops dished out against people who are on the margins of society and  who experience great oppression reflects the cops reactionary political agenda.

In addition to being dangerous, Tasers will be used disproportionately on the already marginalised. Last year’s review of Tasers by NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, found that the weapon has most commonly been used against people with mental health issues. “What a disgrace given the inadequate funding for mental health in this country”, said Chris Williams, Socialist Alliance convener in Wollongong.

‘Research by Amnesty International shows that Tasers have been used by police officers against children, the mentally ill and the physically disabled. They have been used against people who are restrained. This money should be spent on services to assist the mentally and physically disabled, not on potentially lethal weapon that has been proven to be used on them.

There is no independent research showing that Tasers are safe but there is a lot of hard evidence that they kill. How many people will have to die before Tasers are banned? They must be stopped from being used!’Jess Moore, Resistance organiser in Wollongong concluded.

Another example of tasers being used for thuggery comes from the USA. Recently a 15 year old teenager from Michigan, Brett Elder, died after being tasered.

Elders’s aunt, Cindy Hender, witnessed the police taser attack. According to AFP she said Elder “was flopping around and looked like a fish out of water … His whole body was bent over.”

According to Amnesty International, Elder’s death is the second death of a minor from taser use in 2009. A total of 351 people have died after being tasered in the US since its introduction in June 2001. Amnesty International’s Angela Wright told AFP, “Taser guns are not the safe weapons they are portrayed to be”.

Tasers are described as a ’less lethal weapon’ along with plastic bullets (well, tell that to the nationalist community in the north of Ireland who experienced only too well the so-called ‘less lethal weapon’ … symbolic of bloody brutal repression under British occupation!)

Campaign groups have amassed a wealth of evidence on Taser-related deaths. Amnesty International highlighted the fact that 346 people in the US had died since 2001 after being Tasered by police.

Despite this, the weapons were passed for use by all British police forces in December.

Since then the use of the potentially lethal devices has largely been investigated by the forces themselves, with only instances of death or serious injury being passed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The IPCC has now stated that it will automatically handle all instances of complaints deriving from Taser use.

So it will be a case of not if but when some thuggish violent cop(s) tasers to death someone in this country…

Rally at SOAS – 19th July

Rally tomorrow called by Unison @ SOAS from 6pm

Show SOAS management that attention hasn’t been taken off them and stand witness on the site where 9 cleaners were take into detention and others forced to go underground a week previously.

 I certainly will attend so see you there comrades…

http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com/2009/06/rally-this-friday-campaign-builds.html

Another one bites the dust….

So farewell Kitty Ussher, who has resigned from government as she doesn’t want to cause further embarrassment regarding her expenses…. 

Not only did she desire tasteful interiors at the expense of the public purse but she was another ‘flipper’….

Indeed if Kitty had remained in the DWP she was supposed to have been involved in launching a public consultation on housing benefit reform.

Update: Was she pushed or did she jump? Seems like Kitty was pushed..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/18/gordon-brown-sacks-kitty-ussher

A picture is worth a thousand words…

Victory to the SOAS occupiers

At 12.30pm today, after several rounds of intense and complicated negotiations we have reached an agreement between all parties.

Well done SOAS occupiers, we shall see what happens. But this is a brilliant example of taking collective action, making demands and the importance of solidarity.

And read Dirty deportation tactics at SOAS.

Send letter immediately to Home Office

Two of the cleaners are being held at racist Serco run Yarls Wood. Please send the below letter to Alan Johnson.

From http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com/2009/06/send-this-letter-to-home-office-now.html

This is the letter for everyone to send ASAP!! Spread the word!!

Rt Honourable Alan Johnson, MP
Secretary of State for the Home Office
3rd Floor, Peel Buildings
2 Marsham St, London SW1 4DF

Fax: 020 8760 3132
Email: UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Home Secretary

I am writing to ask you to grant leave to remain, with the right to work, to the SOAS cleaners, Marina Silva, who has claimed asylum and Rosa de Perez who are currently being held in Yarl’s Wood IRC. We are deeply concerned that five of their colleagues were deported within 48 hours of the raid on SOAS, without any chance to put their case for being granted the right to stay and in some cases breaking up family relationships.

Marina and Rosa are two of the nine cleaners who were arrested in a raid by around 40 officers of the Border Agency on Friday 12th June 2009, on campus at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). They are charged with overstaying visas—but both women have had good reasons to enter the UK and an urgent need to work to support themselves and their families. Both have worked hard for ISS, a company that is notorious for exploiting migrant labour, for low wages.

Marina is sixty-three years old. She is from Bolivia and her husband was killed in an honour killing after which she was threatened and harassed until she was forced to leave her home. She has been living in the UK for several years and has made a life here. She is ill and was due a hospital appointment on the day of the raid. She has now made an application to stay to be safe and to live in dignity in the UK. These women are not criminals, they are hard working people on low pay who have worked to pay their bills and support their family in the dirty and undignified job as a cleaner. I believe that they should not be treated as criminals.

While Rosa has not sought to resist removal, she will be returned to extreme poverty in Nicaragua and will be unable to support her family—having four children who in the economic crisis of her home country have no other means of support. She will be unemployed when returned. She is in urgent need of the compassion to allow her, now she is here, the ability to stay and to work to support her children and I would ask for a work permit to allow her to continue to work, but in dignity.

While I recognize that their overstay was unlawful, the manner of their detainment at SOAS was shockingly aggressive, disproportionate, deceiving and unnecessary. The cleaning company, which employs the cleaners, ISS, had collaborated with the UK Border Agency to arrest the workers through the pretence of an “emergency staff meeting” at 6.30am on Friday 12th June. Once 40 officers, dressed in riot gear, were hidden around the meeting and managers barred exit during the first part of the meeting before the immigration officers pounced on workers. The SOAS campus was sealed off while workers were locked in a room, and then questioned one by one in an adjacent room. Union representatives trying to bring water and aid to their members—including a woman more than six months pregnant—were denied access and not allowed to provide any legal aid for their members, who should have had the right to a solicitor.

I am very concerned about these workers who were employed by ISS, a company that had just been forced to grant union recognition and to pay the London Living Wage to its cleaners working in SOAS. I am especially concerned that the raid took place on the very morning on which cleaners were to rally in support of their sacked UNISON trade union branch chair, who was also an ISS employee. Rosa and Maria are just two of the thousands of migrant workers, refugee and asylum seekers who make a valuable contribution to our society. Like so many who work unsocial hours for low pay, they are making a valuable contribution to society, and they should not be punished and hunted like criminals for this.

I am deeply concerned at what appears to be UKBA officials being used to discipline workers in the process of unionising and appeal for permission to stay and work to be granted to the SOAS workers. All of these people are working and supporting themselves as well as paying taxes and national insurance contributions. You will be aware of the research which shows the greater than average economic contribution of working migrants who are single and without dependents in the UK.

I therefore urge you to: –Release Marina and Rosa on bail immediately and give consideration to our appeal for a grant of leave to remain to these workers. In Marina’s case to grant humanitarian protection ~ in Rosa’s case to grant a work visa. –To allow those SOAS cleaners who have been deported to renter the country for reasons of family reunion and to work. –To make clear that no person should be raided and held in such a way in the future, without water, medicine or the right to be seen by representatives wishing to provide legal assistance. I would welcome an urgent response as these workers have only days before removal directions. I look forward to hearing from you on the matters I have raised above.

Yours sincerely
Name:
Address:
City: Postcode: Country:
Date: Email: Phone:

Defend Mark France

Got an email from leftie activist Mark France (and fellow comrade from my anti-apartheid days in B’ham during 1980s) regarding victimisation along with the threat of the sack by his employers, the DWP. See below the press release and his union, PCS, is supporting him.

Good luck Mark, it’s unbelievable what stunts and scams employers pull!

Illegitimi non carborundum!!

————————–

Julie Must GO NOW!
Mark Must Stay!

Mark Anthony France, the 46 year old Spokesperson of the Julie Must GO NOW! Campaign, is facing the prospect of losing his job, because he spoke out against the corruption of parliamentary democracy in the UK.

Mark who works at Bromsgrove Job Centre [as a Grade B Admin Officer earning £14,700 a year] organised the petition that called on Julie Kirkbride MP to resign immediately [ Julie is reported to have had an income of £266,000 last year]. On 28th May Julie Kirkbride ‘stood down’ as Bromsgrove’s MP.

Mark launched the petition during a live Sky News broadcast from Bromsgrove High Street on Saturday 16th
A transcript of this interview is being used by his employer the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] to sack him from his post.

The charge against him is that “employees should not comment on matters of controversy which fall within Ministers responsibility”

Today, speaking from his family home,  Mark said:

“The attempt to silence me will fail. I have a democratic right to speak. Alongside thousands of other Job Centre Staff up and down the country I work hard to ensure that the victims of the recession are treated with dignity. We face a bullying management culture that stamps on the human rights of Job Centre Staff and our Unemployed customers”

“The DWP can punish me and my family for daring to speak the truth…but they will not stop the ‘Peasants Revolt’ that started in Bromsgrove from growing”.

“On Saturday 20th June I will be in Bromsgrove High Street and I will speak”

ISS take the piss…

This from the Justice for SOAS Cleaners website about ISS. And boy do ISS have high corporate opinions of themselves.

Well, they certainly do ‘act’ when migrant workers organise and demand better pay and conditions…..they bring in immigration. And yes, they ‘care’ for …..their shareholders and fat profits gained from exploitation

Prizes for the best replies! (From the official Website HERE)

 Our Values are the foundation for all we do. They are shaped and cast through over 100 years of ISS history and they continue to guide us more than anything else. Our values are:

Honesty – we respect

Our honesty is not negotiable. We respect our customers, our colleagues and our company – honesty comes first.

Entrepreneurship – we act

Action speaks louder than words. All our employees have a ‘licence to act’ and are expected to do so.

Responsibility – we care

Indifference is immoral. We care about what we do and how we do it.

 Oh, and this statement below conveys their ‘caring and sharing’ values…. They have their own definition of ethical standards as it sure as hell contradicts my own..

We put corporate sustainability at the heart of everything we do. Over the years we’ve led the way in environmental, social and ethical matters, showing that these values are a key part of profitable growth and long-term business success.

Yes, as it is all about profitable growth…. and the exploitation of workers’….

Btw: you can email your comments re ISS and their ‘values’ at http://www.uk.issworld.com/about_iss/Pages/corporate_sustainability.aspx