Gordon McKay gave a formidable demolition of the Private Finance Initiative. He illustrated his argument by pointing out the example of Edinburgh Royal infirmary. The cost to build was £193 million, the cost to the tax payer is £1.26 billion. As Gordon commented "and at the end of the day the NHS does not own a single brick". Gordon lambasted PFI as wasteful. Damaging greed. Nice one Gordon.
Next Harriet Harman acted as warm up act before Bob Oram swaggered to the rostrum for a full powered blast at local authority employers. As a headline he emphasised the document "Reducing Workforce Costs" distributed by the employers as their contribution to the Tory cuts agenda.
Bob condemned the total disregard of the national agreement and the total disgrace of a refusal to meet a legitimate pay claim. The new agenda is replacing staff with volunteers, freezing recruitment and reductions in salary. That's the short term. In the long term, look for the redesign of local authority "Easy Council" style - no frills with an ill trained outsourced workforce .
The threat to local authorities and their staff is too often overlooked in the wider picture and Bob made sure UNISON kept their concerns central.