Yesterday Andy Burnham addressed a packed gathering of the Labour faithful at North West UNISON’s office.
It was a timely speech as part of Labour's summer campaign offensive. Burnham is an articulate and engaging speaker who talks in language that actually speaks to ordinary voters. A rare quality in a shadow cabinet awash with southern policy wonks whose ideas seem to stem from glugging Rioja over an Islington vintage effect kitchen table, complete with Cath Kidston crockery and twins called Cornelius and Cosmo.
On 17 January 2014 a conference was held in Manchester to explore predominantly the impact of the coop bank crisis on the future of a (truly) cooperative bank as well as the wider crossroads for the cooperative movement. Delegates came from a range of backgrounds including trade unions, retail coops, credit unions, and 'coop consultants'.
As local authorities are now obliged to consider employee bids to run local services under the guise of coops or mutuals, and also obliged under the same provisions in the Localism Act to disclose senior pay levels, it is logical to assume that pay transparency reaches across all those delivering public services. It seems not.
Another dangerous, vacuous and neo-Tory diatribe has been issued by the cooperative council network. Of course the real title is ‘Towards co-operative councils: empowering people to change their lives’ but the message is identical to the Tory’s Big Society and the economic liberals in the Coalition – instead of fighting cuts let’s pretend we can put a sticking plaster over the gaping economic wound if only ‘local people’ in ‘local communities’ get involved in delivering services:
http://www.councils.coop/2013/01/16/co-operative-councils-set-out-policy-agenda/
Islington Labour Councillor James Murray writes that the Con Dem Government's hands off approach to the housing crisis (in terms of affordability and scarcity) is failing and calls for state investment in social housing:
'A comprehensive response means investing in new social housing, with councils – who in many places are landlords with huge stocks – helping to solve the crisis. Investing in new social housing, rather than spending on benefits to subsidise private rents, would help raise the number of new homes, of the sort we need in the places we need them. Regulating the private rental market should play a role in any solution, whilst potential home buyers could be helped through financial regulation, and by looking at new solutions like cooperative models of ownership'
http://classonline.org.uk/docs/Time_to_step_in-James_Murray.pdf
