Crimes against humanity in Gaza

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s Emergency Session on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge held last Wednesday in Brussels has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
    The Jury [1] reported: ‘The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza.’ http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/

For Tony Benn by Peter Branson

You told it how it is, a money world
that doesn’t work for most, all double think
and spin. My question, did you go too far
or not half far enough? A lifebelt in
a sea of sharks, what use is that? They love
you now. Their Fool, you never stood a chance.

http://peterbransonpoetry.weebly.com/

Labour's misguided embrace of austerity

Not only do Balls’s austerity gestures fail to appease Labour’s opponents while alienating its natural supporters still further. They also ignore the disastrous record of austerity in Britain and across Europe, even on its own terms. Osborne’s four-year squeeze delivered three years of recession and stagnation, a forecast deficit of £75bn instead of a balanced budget and the longest fall in living standards since the 19th century’, writes Seumas Milne in the Guardian, stating a plain truth that appeared to evade many delegates at the recent Labour Party conference:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/24/austerity-labour-core-voters-ed-miliband

Labour will not deliver without a fiscal stimulus

#Lab14 Yesterday’s pro-austerity mantra of Ed Balls about ‘balancing the books’, ‘difficult decisions’ and ‘tough fiscal rules’ should send a shiver down the spine of every UNISON member. As Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz said in the FT last week ‘the single most important policy is to improve the macroeconomic policy through a well designed fiscal stimulus’. Deflationary policies of austerity are the cause of wage stagnation.

Dave Prentis was right to point out in his Conference speech yesterday that working people have been ‘betrayed by privatisation, betrayed by the very people who crashed our economy’ and have suffered a five-year pay freeze while their pay has fallen in value by over one fifth’. But the economic prospectus set out by Balls can only lead to more of the same – continuing austerity means a continuing pay freeze and capping of benefits as well as further cuts in funding of public services. Unions working flat out for the return of a Labour government next May must challenge the Balls economic narrative otherwise we will be sleepwalking into a future of permanent austerity.

Democracy & Devolution - Rule P 1.3.6 the UNISON solution

In the aftermath of last week’s Scottish referendum the big political issue is the impact on the UK Parliament of greater devolved powers to Scotland, namely to what extent if any should Scottish MPs be excluded from voting at Westminster on say, matters affecting English public services. UNISON conference delegates might consider that this is one area where the union has been ahead of its time.   
    Over ten years ago UNISON NDC approved a report on bargaining and devolution which led to a simple rule change which dealt with the new reality of bargaining structures in devolved administrations and thus empowered the standing orders committee to make recommendations on restricting voting to delegates covered by specific negotiating machinery. Who are the modernisers and who are the dinosaurs?

Trade union internationalism and practical solidarity

This weekend a very productive joint region international seminar at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester brought together 50 UNISON activists from Northern, North West and Scotland. Building on a session in Glasgow in 2013, the event heard a keynote presentation on TTIP from Polly Jones of the World Development Movement and following workshops an action plan was agreed to step up campaigning/lobbying on the proposed trade deal which will open up public services to US corporations as well as undermine democracy.

Moving House by Dave Puller

One day when I arrived home from school
My family had moved without telling me
But they'd left things behind
There was the tatty three-piece suite
The radiogramme
And the bed I shared with my three brothers
Then I saw my brother Sid
And I asked him why we moved
He said "Dave we've not moved anywhere
We've been evicted"
http://www.davepuller-writer.co.uk/index.html