Get to know Gove (and friends)

David Cameron at the Conservative Party Conference claimed that ‘we are all in this together’ talking about the need for swinging public service cuts. Well hats off to the shadow cabinet for not being caught out over MP’s expenses. They made their pile the old fashioned way….

Shadow cabinet's second jobs: Their hourly rate (The minimum wage is £5.73)

£1,153: Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove earned £5,000 a month – or £60,000 a year – for "one hour a week or so" of journalism for The Times.

£764: Francis Maude, shadow Cabinet Office minister, earned £36,700 a year from Barclays Bank for six days a year of work, including overseas meetings.

£187.50: David Willetts was paid £60,000 a year for 40 days' work as an adviser on pensions for Punter Southall in London's Jermyn Street.

£145: Oliver Letwin worked eight hours a week giving corporate finance advice to investment bank NM Rothschild, earning £145 an hour, or just over £60,000 per annum.

£395: Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke was paid £38,000 as a non-executive director of Independent News and Media, owner of The Independent. He worked about one day a month.

£346: Andrew Mitchell, shadow International Development Secretary, was paid £36,000 a year for one to two hours a week of consultancy work with Accenture.

£260: Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was paid £25,000 a year as a non-executive director for Profero, working one day a month.

Why support the Post Workers?

It will never be profitable to deliver hospital results to elderly pensioners in tower blocks. It will never be profitable to deliver the holiday post card to your auntie from the Isle of Skye. The protection of such an important social and universal post service requires cross subsidizing from more profitable forms of mail between big urban centres.

The tragedy of the New Labour years has been the undermining of this previously loved and respected service by the half baked introduction of the market, the failure to invest in appropriate infrastructure and the ludicrous public subsidising of private delivery firms.

It is a bare arsed fact that the only institution standing between us and yet another full, disastrous and costly public service privatisation is the post workers union (The Communication Workers Union). New Labour have hoped that, by appointing multi millionaire super executives Alan Crozier and Adam Leighton, shear bloody minded intimidation, belligerence and the occasional bung might soften up the post office for privatisation. The result has been to develop one of worst cultures of management bullying in any industry in the UK. Little wonder that post workers have just voted for industrial action (76% yes vote on 67 percent turnout).

This strike is not about the impact of the internet, or Spanish practices, or modernisation. It is about the ability of collective action to defend a social good. It is about illusions of market choice obscuring the reality of reduced service and greater cost. It is about the role of unions in our society and whether the political agenda is to be shaped by working people like you and me or yacht hopping, multi millionaire smoozing free marketeers like Lord Peter (unelected) Mandleson and George (related to George III) Osbourne.

Calling progressive bloggers

In the spirit of co-operation called for by this post at Socialist Unity, I am more than happy to link to any progressive blogs that are prepared to display the People's Charter logo. Just put your link in the comments box.

IDF general to boycott beauty products

The Israeli Army (Israeli Defence Force) is having a conscription crisis. Large numbers of young Israelis are finding ways to avoid compulsory armed service.  Usually by citing religious objections, however a recent high profile case involves a successful model Bar Rafaeli, who chose to arrange a marriage of convenience and take up an advertising contract rather than serve.

Bizarrely Bar Rafaeli originally agreed to compensate for this by promoting conscription and visiting injured soldiers. As the stupidity of such a compromise has sunk in her attitude has hardened and she has publicly condemned conscription as futile waste of her time,

 “Israel or Uganda, what difference does it make? It makes no difference to me. Why is it good to die for our country? What, isn’t it better to live in New York? Why should 18-year-old kids have to die? It’s dumb that people have to die so that I can live in Israel.” Bar Rafaeli

Even more bizarrely the retired general in charge of IDF HR has come out and said that in response he will boycott the beauty products she advertises. Major-General (Res.) Elazar Stern is quoted as saying, "What we have here is a moral problem as well as a democratic one – a society causing its own internal decay, and we won't be able to endure it eventually". The retired general said he has stopped buying products advertised by supermodel Bar Refaeli, "ever since they decided to put a draft dodger on their products – external beauty overpowering internal beauty”.

You know, he is a sensitive guy.

Just to illustrate the moral problems incubating in the Zionist state this year the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) named an Eden Springs commercial Bar Refaeli, as the ‘most sexist add of the year”. Which would be fine if there wasn’t a strong wiff of the selective application of progressive values here in defense of something that is well, just not very progressive at all.

NEW MORAL ARMY? The Tories are normalising Fascism

Eric Pickles, Tory Party Chairman and part time fat northern bloke in City trader braces, has got himself into a bit of a pickle over the Waffen SS. The Tories require the support of rather unpleasant East European nationalist in order to form a new anti-Federal right wing block in the European Parliament. Therefore Pickles has had to come out fighting with apologies for the Waffen SS Latvian volunteer legion which was apparently only “following orders” when rounding up Jews for mass extermination in 1942.

In Latvia the nationalists have attempted to portray the ‘volunteer’ Latvian SS as ‘nationalists’, ‘patriots’ and ‘anti-communists’ rather than the unwilling ‘conscripts’ that Pickles has described.

The Tories are unlikely to back down now they are in so deep. The net effect is that the NEW MORAL TORY PARTY © is helping to bring Fascism and it’s apologists back into the mainstream.

Supreme Court Judges “Self reproducing elite? Moi?”

Apparently of the eleven top judges just appointed to the new UK supreme court:

I have therefore scientifically calculated your statistical chances of getting preferential treatment if you speak proper:

Your welcome.

Malalai Joya- Raising My Voice book review and condensed read

Malalai Joya, 2009  Raising My Voice,  Rider Books, £11.99.

This book is a co-written auto-biography and political polemic written by the youngest and most famous female MP in Afghanistan Malalai Joya. The book is a testament to Joya’s bravery in standing up to not only the Taliban, but also the corrupt Afghan government and the US occupiers. It seems like a miracle that someone like Joya could exist in Afghanistan, she appears to have been shaped by a series of chance developments that have led her to a position of moral authority that she now feels compelled to exercise. A political father, ending up in a secular controlled refugee camp, coming from a part of Afghanistan free from direct Taliban or Northern Alliance control. These factors have allowed her to educate herself and have lead her to office in a seemingly otherwise utterly dismal political and social scene. The book is the story of how she has used this office to stand against the corrupt western backed government of warlords, drug runners and religious fundamentalists (Yes that’s the government not the Taliban). 

This book should be read by anybody who is unsure whether we should pull our troops out of Afghanistan. It may not be the world’s greatest autobiography, but it is a compelling and easy read. I read it cover to cover in a few hours, finding it impossible to put down.

Buy it. Read it. Put your name on the inside cover and pass it on. Everybody who gives a damn about whether British Soldiers should be in Afghanistan should read this book

 Condensed Read.

I wrote this book because there is a good chance I will be killed. Afghanistan has a sophisticated political history but has suffered from foreign interventions. The English, Russians, Iranians, Pakistanis etc have oppressed us and should leave us alone, we are smart enough to run our own country. A democratic secular Afghanistan is impossible as long as the US backs a government of corrupt murderers, warlords and rapists from the Northern Alliance.  The people do not support these people because they comitted crimes worse than the Taliban after the Russians were driven out. Why has the US put these people into power? I was elected to the post invasion Loya Jirga because of my work in the local community (for example educating girls in secret under Taliban rule). When I got to the Loya Jurga I persuaded them to let me speak and used my speech to denounce all the warlords and criminals in the room. They were furious but I became known all over Afghanistan. I was elected as an MP. I am now banned from parliament because I have used my position to point out the government and main opposition are all warlords, drug runners or Iranian backed thugs. The softer reformists are scared to speak out. The occupying forces don’t support me. The NGO’s don’t support me. The people support me. The Taliban are brutal thugs but the occupation is making them strong. US troops should get out now. The situation for women is worse. Most Women MP’s are often worse on women’s issues than the warlords because they are put there by the warlord’s parties. I will keep speaking out.