PCS Land Registry lobby/rally

Excellent lobby/rally today at Parliament, which was organised by PCS union, about the proposed cuts by Land Registry. Committee Room 10 was packed out with standing room only listening to speakers. Great day, and thanks to the PCS activists who came to Parliament to register their anger at these proposed cuts by management. Solidarity to you!

This is a press release by the LRC who are supporting the PCS campaign….

In October 2009 Land Registry published proposals that include around 1500 job cuts. This will involve closing 5 Land Registry Offices (Croydon, Tunbridge Wells, Portsmouth, Stevenage, and Peterborough) and the privatisation and outsourcing a number of LR functions.

The PCS union has launched a campaign to fight against these proposals that are damaging to the public sector and to pay and conditions overall, and members are today (Wed 20 Jan) lobbying Parliament against the Land Registry job cuts and office closures.

John McDonnell, LRC Chair, said:

“To be cutting back an organisation like the Land Registry just when the Government is arguing the economy is coming out of recession is another example of New Labour short termism. Jobs will be lost and this important service will be degraded if the Government’s plans go ahead.

“Even at this stage we are hoping Ministers will think again and recognise the important role the Land Registry has to play in the future of our economy.”

Gary Heather, Labour parliamentary candidate for Tunbridge Wells and LRC National Committee member, said:

“Land Registry staff, their union PCS and I are quite rightly outraged and opposed to these ill-thought-out plans. These proposals are devastating for the staff involved. They amount to crude cost cutting measures, without proper regard to the livelihood of staff or the service to the public.

“It is unacceptable to close whole Land Registry offices, effectively placing staff on the scrapheap without any realistic prospect of redeployment, while also putting service to the public at risk. I will be giving my full support to PCS members and their campaign.”

Join the love mutiny

I have always wanted to be a mutineer….

When I first skimmed read the below, I kinda felt old and my age but that’s to do with me (and possibly remembering similar discussions/debates on these issues as a youth..). But spending more time looking at the event it looks imaginative, original and interesting. Fusing political discussions with other mediums. It looks good. And it beats staid, boring, dry leftie meetings with the same old traditional format…ones I am used to and this makes a change…

And especially the subject of love …Love being that many-splendored thing. Love that 4 letter word,  makes the world go around…apparently…Favourite of lyricists and poets and musicians, constantly saturated with the bourgeois norms of love though the real meaning is elusive to many of us… And what is the real meaning? Comradeship?

What is love? (other than titles of songs by Howard Jones and Haddaway) Love, and sex (drugs and rock ‘n roll?) under patriarchal capitalism, conditioned, commodified and commercialised, the emphasis being on monogamy and heterosexuality. Along with alienation and atomisation added to the mix. It is time to explore these constraints, a time for celebration and liberation. And as a socialist feminist, I would be interested if there are discussions around women; conditioning, sexuality, traditional gender roles, power relationships, institution of the family, patriarchy, marriage, co-habitation, civil partnerships, expectations, contradictions and complexities… Love and sex, the whole shebang…

And what kind of society do we want?

I feel an Alexandra Kollontai moment coming on…

I will certainly be attending…..Love on Trial

Love on Trial. 10th February 6pm
Resistance Gallery, Poyser St.

Money on Trial was a fantastic success with around 100 people coming along and almost all of them emailing or letting us know personally they had a fantastic time.

The Sauce blogged about it here

Our next event is especially for all you romantics. If music be the food of love..

Join us on Facebook here . On Twitter here.

We are looking for artwork, musicians, poets, visual artists, films, speakers and, of course, participants for the evening.

Join the team or send us any ideas & suggestions by emailing us atjointhemutiny@gmail.com

More info on how to get involved coming soon.

Please click the above image, print off and put up in any place or make into flyers to hand out at meetings, in class, at work or on the streets…

x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o

Love is in the air. Love is on the radio, advertised between television programmes telling us how to conduct our relationships, on chocolate bars, on posters for sweaty nightclubs. From Shakespeare to Celebrity Big Brother, love dominates our thoughts, our conversations and our desires. So what is this thing called Love?

This Valentine’s Day, Mutiny presents Love on Trial – an evening of love songs, poems, photography and performances. The night will begin with the revolutionary premier of Speed Debating: get in pairs to discuss the issues of the day.

There will be a mezzanine cinema showing short films, YouTube clips and presentations. The night will close with an hour of music including live performances and a music medley of the world’s finest love songs.

At the heart of the event beats a three-part discussion about love in 2010 bringing together activists, academics, authors and troublemakers. We will begin with Love for Sale, looking at how romance and sex have been commercialised while celebrating resistances to such appropriation.

The second session will focus on Love and Hate, examining the ways some forms of love – LGBT, cross cultural and polyamorous relationships – are marginalised and how people are challenging this.

Finally, Love thy Neighbour discusses the state’s role in the type of love that’s valued- monogamy, marriage, the family- and what that means for society. Can we imagine a world where love is liberated and celebrated in all its forms?

The Mutiny has begun – but how it takes shape is still very much up to you. Please come to our organising meetings, please contribute scripts, photographs, poems, articles and papers. Please bring everyone you love to what promises to be a truly revolutionary Valentine’s extravaganza.

And videos from the night can me found here: http://jointhemutiny.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/all-3-videos-from-money-on-trial/

The meeting will decide the structure and content of the next Mutiny event. We are very keen that as many people as possible get involved and help make decisions, find people to contribute and also invite others to come along.

Violence on Trial could touch on domestic violence, violence and war, state violence such as police violence, and resistance on violence.

We therefore hope to connect with people from the feminist movement, the anti-war movement, the Palestinian solidarity movement, the direct action movement as well as environmentalists, socialists, anarchists, LGBT activists and basically anyone who wants to take part in an engaging night out – or indeed simply just come and watch.

If people know photographers, filmmakers, artists, speakers, authors, web designers, actors and any other performer who would like to take part do invite them to the organising meeting and pass on my email so they can let me know how I can help them.

But most of all, do come along yourselves. Feel free to bring a dip for the buffet but most of all bring your ideas and contacts books!

Defend Land Registry workers

Tomorrow, which I am attending, PCS members who work for the Land Registry will be lobbying Parliament about the latest proposals from LR management which argue for outsourcing, privatisation, closure of 5 offices and with up to 1400 workers losing their jobs.

This is further evidence of the vicious ongoing attacks on the public sector. They say ‘efficiency savings’ which is nothing more than an exercise in sanitised language, euphemisms for what they really mean, cuts.

As Chris Baugh (Assistant General Secretary of the PCS) argues:

It is staggering that over a third of land and property in England and Wales isn’t registered. What is needed is a Domesday book for the 21st century to ensure confidence and security in land ownership. Cutting staff and closing offices will undermine this confidence and result in a poorer service that will hamper the Land Registry’s ability to respond to a recovery in the housing market. 1,700 jobs have already been lost over the last two years and plans for more cuts and privatisation will see the loss of yet more skilled and experienced staff. Completing the land register should be the priority not knee jerk cuts that could end up costing the taxpayer more in the long term.

After the lobby there will be rally with various speakers including MP John McDonnell.

Some thoughts on warmongering

So Geoff Hoon, former defence secretary (emphasis on defence secretary…. like don’t they have briefings?), only discovered about the 45 mins claim was when he read about it in the September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s weapons (emphasis should be on ‘dodgy’ dossier).

The only thing in the draft that, surprised is perhaps too strong a word, the only thing I had not seen before, in terms of my familiarity with the intelligence, was the 45-minute claim,” he said.

Furthermore

Mr Hoon said he was aware it had become an issue after the invasion, but said he had not realised why until he saw a Panorama programme more than a year later which included the newspaper headlines from September 2002 about the 45-minute claim.

How much more surreal can you get? He is defence secretary and he garners his information from a Panorama programme … more than a year later (he had been in Kiev at the time of the dodgy dossier reporting….again, didn’t he have briefings? Wasn’t he kept informed by his minions? Wouldn’t he have expected to have been kept informed?) . Was Hoon totally ensconced in that thing known as the Westminster bubble that he shut off the functioning of his brain? And/or is he just one lyin’ Hoon dog? In other words, Hoon comes across as clueless and spineless apparatchik but why should he think for himself when most of the thinking was done by the Whips office and NL headquarters. Combined with the fact that Hoon didn’t think it was a problem there wasn’t much of a debate in the Cabinet. Obviously, the issue of democracy didn’t concern Hoon!

Hoon’s answers about Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion are rather odd. Remember, T Bliar, professionally qualified as a barrister. G Hoon, professionally qualified as a barrister. J Straw, professionally qualified as a guess what? All of them would know exactly what a legal opinion would look like. It would go into a full analysis of the various arguments including all the arguments that will be used against the position of the government. It would set out the relevant factual background. It would be a very long document full of detail argument. It would also look at the various pros and cons of different courses of action along with the potential risks.

What Goldsmith produced after a long history of being of the opposite opinion was a two page load of rubbish that reached an extremely glib conclusion. None of these clever people learned in the law spotted this. It never ceases to astound me at the level of servile gutless spineless behaviour at these democratically elected individuals whose intentions were dishonourable and whose actions have created a remote, opaque and distant government.

But one person who real disappoints me still is Nick Cohen. Why oh why, Nick! You were once a good leftie and then you spiralled down into the depressing depths of the pro-war ‘Decent Left’ (not ‘decent’ and certainly not Left!). His understanding that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a fascist state, where is the evidence? Along with the comparisons of Nazi Germany. He omits to mention the total destruction of the infrastructure of Iraq, and the erosion of women’s rights, so on and so on.

And of course…the oil where western vulture-esque companies circle the oil reserves ready to swoop in the name of privatisation and profit. The losers in this game being the Iraqi people as the stooge government is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the States. Yes, what about that comrade Cohen? Were the Iraqi people liberated by imperialism and ongoing occupation?

Recession, unemployment and women

This isn’t an equal opportunities recession, it hits disproportionately the poor and women. According to the Evening Standard:

Women in London have been hardest hit by the recession with a 90 per cent increase in the number claiming the dole since the credit crisis hit, the Standard has found.

Female unemployment has doubled in boroughs such as Kingston, Sutton, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Harrow, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Merton, Wandsworth, Ealing, Barnet, Bexley and Bromley. These are the areas that these women live in. To those without a knowledge of the social geography of London these are, with the exception of Kensington & Chelsea, the more affluent areas of outer London. Inner London Boroughs apart from Kensington & Chelsea (which is one borough not two) are not mentioned in the report and  neither are the poorer mixed area outer London boroughs such as Barking & Dagenham, Waltham Forest or Newham.  What would be interesting is: where did these women work before they lost their jobs? What jobs did that they do? What sort of employer? Professor Ian Gordon, from the LSE, admits that he finds this all a bit of a puzzle….(“There’s still a puzzle why female unemployment has gone up so much in London..”).

Overall, the number of women on the dole in the capital increased from 39,501 to 74,982 over the 19-month period, according to the Office of National Statistics figures.

Jim Knight (employment minister) states that unemployment is at 450,000 lower than predicted though tell that to the people who are suffering the sharp end of recession, redundancy, and unemployment, including the soul destroying struggle of trying to find work, existing on benefits and the spiralling misery, depression and desperation that people will have inevitably faced. Whether the recession slows down or we endure a double dip it is working class people who are paying for the crisis in capitalism and neoliberalism.

And with various Parties engaged in a race to the bottom politics which means carrying swingeing cuts in the public sector means more loss of jobs, livelihoods and further misery. As Richard Murphy eloquently states:

What is more, the reverse is true. Increase spending now and the multiplier effect which compounds the impact of cuts in the above analysis goes into reverse: more jobs are created, revenue flows to government, benefit spending falls and government debt goes down with it.

The patriarchal institution of marriage…..

So the Tories think they are on a vote winner here clearing up those swing voters over this (though Tory frontbencher David Willetts admitted that because of financial constraints Tory plans to recognise marriage in the tax system would not be in the party’s first budget if they win power next year).

Conservative plans for tax breaks for married couples have come under fire from both Labour and the Lib Dems. Shadow foreign secretary William Hague defended the proposal, saying: “It has got to be right to support families and supporting marriage is part of that.”

As I said before and will reiterate the points, it is about choice in how people live their lives as opposed to corralling people into marriage. Here’s an idea reduce the financial gap between rich and poor not lecture people in the supposed mythical wonders of marriage and the family. Give people a proper standard of living and let them make up their minds about relationships, kids and families. Treat people equally as opposed to giving tax breaks to married couples (though it seems they are reneging on that incentive.

Overall and core to these reactionary with the whiff of Victorian morality is the emphasis on the rigid hetero nuclear family. And that’s what worries me will we be seeing a return to the reactionary politics of yonder? And let’s not forget the vile Section 28 and the insidious homophobia that was rampant in the Tory Party. That worries me.

The proposals from the Tories is about re-discovering the traditional family, along with rigid and fixed gender roles and the sexual division of labour. So…lets do the time warp and go back to those repressed and straitjacketed times of the 1950s. And in the green paper there is also an emphasis on the patriarchal father figure.

If the Tories care about the welfare of kids then surely having this sticking plaster approach to marriage will only exacerbate misery and distress for everyone? Will a woman be expected to love, honour and obey her husband even if he is violent to her? If  a woman does manage to get away they will be facing a benefits system that will be even more meagre than the one we have now. Oh, the whiff, the undeniable stench of the Dickensian workhouse is ever closer. Does it matter whether people are married, living together? Does it matter if the people bringing up kids aren’t in a hetero relationship? Does it matter if the parent(s) are lesbians or gay men? No it bloody shouldn’t and neither should it concern Willetts!! Improve financial security, support and help as opposed to imposing own reactionary ideology.

These proposals from the Tories put people especially women and kids under the under the patriarchal cosh as what the Tories are spouting is one big fat moral crusade!

Commercial break

Been sorting out technological problems for the past day or so……

Well, after a hard day of politicking yesterday I decided to visit Oxford Street’s HMV’s DVD department which is a bad move by me as I end up gawping at the films, spending hours drifting around the sections grabbing titles and ending up with far too many DVDs to physically carry. And yesterday was no different.  I was tempted by The Avengers box-set and Armchair Thriller (that harks that to the late 1970s and my childhood with the chilly, thrilly and creepy introduction).

Oh, how I need my hit of film DVDs to feed my increasing habit. Got my haul back home and stuck on one of my favourite Sci-fi films from the noughties, a film that didn’t get a general release (I saw it at an Odeon tucked away in the back streets of central London), Cypher. Half way through disaster struck, the film quality became weird (and you wouldn’t be wrong if you assumed it was part of the film) and the screen became overwhelmed by a green pixellated mess (very modern art).

So after a process of elimination…from blaming other ‘alf for leaving his Sopranos DVD in the player for over two weeks (though was told by ‘Techie Guy’ at shop that shouldn’t be a problem…), to possible kaput DVD player, cable and/or telly… Take ya pick… It seems to be the dud cable and it is within warranty etc. so should be financially reimbursed.

Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare…sorting out techie problems. Fingers crossed the DVD player is fine and I can watch the end of Cypher. My haul of DVD treasures included Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, The Low Down, Cypher, Ghost World, and Requiem for a Dream.

Normal service, of the social/political kind, will resume as quickly as my DVD problems are solved… So, what’s a-happenin’ in the world as head has been buried in a DVD player manual?

An unbelievable defence!

The tense standoff in America between extreme anti-abortion protesters and doctors who provide abortions has been ruptured by a judge’s ruling in Kansas that the killer of a doctor will be allowed to argue in court that he believed he was justified in trying to save unborn children.

Under the ruling, Scott Roeder, 51, would become the first killer of an abortion doctor in US history to be allowed to present his belief in the justification of violence to the courts. He has been charged with murder after shooting George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas in May last year.

Roeder seems to be a common garden terrorist. He decided that his victim should die for political reasons. So much for the sanctity of life that hypocritcal anti-abortionists preach. This was a terrorist act. This was an assassination.

Misogyny alive and kicking in the judiciary…..

It beggars belief.

Back to the middle ages when rape was seen as destroying a woman’s moral standing in respectable society and the right of a man to have exclusive sexual access to his wife. Rape to anyone with a sub atomic particle’s worth of human feeling is the destruction of a woman’s right to sexual self determination.

Why did the judge feel the need to launch into a sexist attack on the woman when all he needed to do was instruct the jury in neutral terms as the CPS had stabbed the woman in the back….?

Misogyny alive and kicking in the judiciary…..

Hat tips: Penny Red and the F Word

Petition to abolish Workfare

Please sign the following petition supporting the abolition of Workfare.

We want to abolish work for your benefit/workfare schemes in the UK. The Welfare Reform Bill will cause severe financial and emotional distress to the poorest and most vulnerable in society.