Green light for Mutuals - Dust off your old CCT guidance and get ready to fight

Whilst the Cabinet Office desperately struggles to reinvent the failing ‘big society’ policy the LGA recently reported that less than 3% of councils responding to a survey have had any interest from staff in setting up employee led mutual arrangements and very few intend to encourage or push this route.

Despite these figures which would depress the most committed ‘big society’ proponent The Cabinet Office are intent on flogging a dead horse are now issuing guidance and changes to legislation to take forward coops and mutuals to make it easier to set them up to run public services:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/mutuals-get-go-ahead

Injunction blocks Tory Council plans to replace libraries staff with volunteers

Library campaigners in Surrey have won a court injunction which stops the Tory led County Council from replacing paid staff at 10 libraries with volunteers.The action was brought last week by Surrey Libraries Action Movement (SLAM), whose spokesman Lee Godfrey told the BBC “We were expecting a three-week wait while the judge considered the merits of the case before deciding whether to issue an injunction. It didn't take the judge very long to decide that our case was strong enough to merit a quick injunction."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-16665381

Fight intensifies against NHS & Social Care Bill

The fight against the NHS and Social Care Bill is hotting up. Yesterday's Observer reported that the cross-party (but Tory led) Commons Health Select Committee is about to publish a highly critical report saying that the reorganisation of the NHS in England is counter productive and "often creates disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to consider truly effective ways of reforming service delivery and releasing savings"  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/21/health-reform-crisis-andrew-lansley?

Southampton one year on - 'UNISON members will not accept pay cuts'

The dispute at Southampton City Council has entered its second year with UNISON and Unite members continuing their resistance to imposed pay cuts. A new phase of protest action is planned including a lobby of a 15 February council meeting and action on 10 April to mark the opening of the £5 million Sea City Museum. The hard line Tory led Council is aiming to cut £76 million from its budget by 2015.

Tomography by Kersten Hensil

The X-ray of my aching
cranium
shows nothing
but the predictable hardenings
of age.
Stop worrying,
the doctor says,
it's just the world
pressure-cooking
your head.

http://germany.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2214

We are the shareowners of Capitalism...and we must make it responsible to us!

At last a debate has begun about the future of capitalism...many on the left consider it a pointless debate given that they consider it something to be torn down. But what most workers and their leaders fail to grasp is they are capitalism...! The largest capital funds in the world are pension funds and many dwarf the GDP of countries.

10 Myths about local pay determination

The 'IDS eye' blog has published a very useful summary of 10 myths associated with local pay determination. It should give Tory proponents of the break up of national pay bargaining plenty of food for thought, particularly the myth 'that the public sector should start varying pay without regard to any other factors, but change does not occur in a vacuum.

Ordering Genes by Helen Oswald

We are what our grandparents ate.
Their choices from the cold store ordered my genes
so that a grapefruit dissected with the proper tool
and eaten by my grandma on the eve of war
accounts for this bitterness I sometimes feel.

Joseph Stiglitz: Austerity is a suicide, it will kill Europe

Ahead of the 2012 world economic summit in Davos, leading US economist Joseph Stiglitz is interviewed by the Hong Kong financial website Quamnet and cautions against the austerity measures being implemented in many European countries: 'the big message that I’m going to talk about in Davos is that the strategy of austerity is a suicide. It will kill Europe, it will kill America and also the global economy. That’s really the important message. You have to get growth' http://www.quamnet.com/newscontent.action?articleId=2150970

Breaking News: Edinburgh dumps privatisation

Edinburgh Council voted this morning to dump the final two of three huge privatisation plans following a hugely successful union and community campaign. Environment Services stayed in house in November and Corporate services and Facilities contracts were voted down today as the SNP joined Labour and Greens to beat the Lib Dems (SNP coalition partners) and the Tories. Had these contracts gone out, about 4,000 jobs would have been affected - the biggest ever council privatisation in Scotland.