Two stories of students revolting today. In Iran, students have held protests at their universities against Ahmadinejad's apparent coup. In London, students are defending the rights of low-paid workers.
Two million Tehranis took to the streets today, putting Ahmadinejad's 'victory' rally on Sunday in the shade.
The demonstrations have been largely peaceful, in contrast to the reaction of state forces. There have been bloody raids on universities, with at least five students reported killed at Tehran University in the early hours of Sunday morning. Two young women - Fatemeh Barati and Mobina Ehterami - and three young men - Kasra Sharafi, Kambiz Shoaee and Mohsen Imani - have been cut down in their prime.
At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, students today occupied the director's office. Their protest is about an event that took place early on Friday morning. Cleaners at the college, who have been conducting a living wage campaign, were called into an office for a meeting, and then surrounded and questioned by 40 immigration police. Nine were taken away, without a chance to consult a lawyer, and some have been deported.
There is a debate in the labour movement about what attitude to take toward immigration laws. I'm strongly in the (utopian?) camp that No One Is Illegal, a phrase coined by Jewish socialist Steve Cohen, who sadly died earlier this year. Everyone has the right to a decent life. If that is not possible because of social and political conditions, change the social and political conditions, don't penalise - and scapegoat - the migrant who is no worse, and often better, than you or I.
In any case, one thing I think all trade unionists should be able to agree on is that workers should not have immigration law used against them each time they fight for better wages and conditions at work. The company that employs the SOAS cleaners is ISS. They also employ the cleaners on London Underground who have been subject to similiar harassment, exactly after they too won a London living wage campaign (which ISS have since said they will not honour).
The SOAS occupation website is: http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com/
As for getting in touch with the protestors in Iran, you are probably aware of how hard that will be, but if I can find any reliable means I will post details.
Monday, 15 June 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
The book corner
What I like about the job I'm doing currently is that I see book publishers' schedules for the next six months, ie, what books are coming out. As I've been doing this work for 10 years I have witnessed many developments.
When I first started, I thought book publishing was the highest pinnacle of human intellectual achievement, but I realise now that it is a complete racket, like most other commercial ventures! A publisher can tell you what will be a bestseller before it's even published, based on the fact that they are going to spend a lot of their marketing money on it. Books that buck this trend are called 'word-of-mouth bestsellers', ie, they're actually some good, and people tell their friends about them.
If someone hits on a new format that sells well, say Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, every other big publisher will rush into print a number of similar books, and thus a genre is born: chick lit. High-brow novels are just another genre: 'literary fiction', which has its own target market and promotion methods.
There has been great consolidation among publishing houses. There are now fewer and they are bigger. Independent bookselling has been squeezed by the growth of big chains such as Borders and now supermarkets. These big sellers are also big buyers and they can dictate the shape of the industry, driving down prices, and making the market less diverse: there are more copies of books sold now, but fewer actual titles published. Amazon has finally become a real player, as it was long predicted they would. Although, as you might have noticed, they don't just bother with books now.
Much printing has moved to China, where it's cheaper. Technological advances have brought many new and fancy formats, and lots of books are bundled in with CDs/DVDs/novelty gifts, etc. In some cases, it is hard to tell whether they still qualify as a book.
I won't go into the developments in all the different genres that I have seen, but just concentrate on a few. I have developed a hatred of crime fiction and the ways of promoting it, which puts me at odds with most of my countrymen and women, I realise, who lap the stuff up. Man is wolf to man... and don't we love to read about it!
The most infuriating and cynical new genre is books about small things you can do to save the planet, printed on paper from trees, that will never get read and usually don't deserve to be. If you really want to save the planet, join the Climate Camp or plant a tree!
Humour books seldom are funny, but one or two can surprise me with their brilliance. I'm not sure what I make of the trend to swearing in book titles, but I think at least it is honest. My colleagues and I, rather quaintly, still debate whether to put the * in titles like The Way of F**k it: The Modern Way to Transform Your Life (which is a so-called self-help title, by the way).
Mind, body and spirit titles ruled for years, yielding much entertainment, but they seem to be in decline: there are, after all, only so many methods of ancient divination you can tap before you have to accept that nothing will be so useful in helping you to know your own future as actually getting off your backside to shape it. Still, I miss the celtic tree symbols (though not the sodding angels - I never got angels).
Business titles have not taken a knock in the downturn. In the good times the titles were all about 'gurus' and their secrets for making a mint, in the crisis the titles are all about what has gone wrong... it's all very well being wise after the event! Computing used to be a tiny genre, and is now massive; graphic novels are burgeoning. Many books 'tie in' to films and television programmes. There is a newish sub-genre of biography titles called 'misery memoirs', based on a good, original title, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Some of the titles that have followed are, in my view, seriously tasteless. The Other Side of the Wall: How An Abused Little Girl Struggled to Make Her Screams Heard Above the Sound of The Neighbour's Television-Set As They Watched a Popular 1970s Television Crime Drama (I made that one up, but there are titles just like this).
When I do this work, I start inventing my own formats and titles, some cleverer and funnier than others, which will, thankfully, never see the light of day, but it keeps my brain working, sort of.
Here are some titles that I have come up with during my current spell of work:
When I first started, I thought book publishing was the highest pinnacle of human intellectual achievement, but I realise now that it is a complete racket, like most other commercial ventures! A publisher can tell you what will be a bestseller before it's even published, based on the fact that they are going to spend a lot of their marketing money on it. Books that buck this trend are called 'word-of-mouth bestsellers', ie, they're actually some good, and people tell their friends about them.
If someone hits on a new format that sells well, say Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, every other big publisher will rush into print a number of similar books, and thus a genre is born: chick lit. High-brow novels are just another genre: 'literary fiction', which has its own target market and promotion methods.
There has been great consolidation among publishing houses. There are now fewer and they are bigger. Independent bookselling has been squeezed by the growth of big chains such as Borders and now supermarkets. These big sellers are also big buyers and they can dictate the shape of the industry, driving down prices, and making the market less diverse: there are more copies of books sold now, but fewer actual titles published. Amazon has finally become a real player, as it was long predicted they would. Although, as you might have noticed, they don't just bother with books now.
Much printing has moved to China, where it's cheaper. Technological advances have brought many new and fancy formats, and lots of books are bundled in with CDs/DVDs/novelty gifts, etc. In some cases, it is hard to tell whether they still qualify as a book.
I won't go into the developments in all the different genres that I have seen, but just concentrate on a few. I have developed a hatred of crime fiction and the ways of promoting it, which puts me at odds with most of my countrymen and women, I realise, who lap the stuff up. Man is wolf to man... and don't we love to read about it!
The most infuriating and cynical new genre is books about small things you can do to save the planet, printed on paper from trees, that will never get read and usually don't deserve to be. If you really want to save the planet, join the Climate Camp or plant a tree!
Humour books seldom are funny, but one or two can surprise me with their brilliance. I'm not sure what I make of the trend to swearing in book titles, but I think at least it is honest. My colleagues and I, rather quaintly, still debate whether to put the * in titles like The Way of F**k it: The Modern Way to Transform Your Life (which is a so-called self-help title, by the way).
Mind, body and spirit titles ruled for years, yielding much entertainment, but they seem to be in decline: there are, after all, only so many methods of ancient divination you can tap before you have to accept that nothing will be so useful in helping you to know your own future as actually getting off your backside to shape it. Still, I miss the celtic tree symbols (though not the sodding angels - I never got angels).
Business titles have not taken a knock in the downturn. In the good times the titles were all about 'gurus' and their secrets for making a mint, in the crisis the titles are all about what has gone wrong... it's all very well being wise after the event! Computing used to be a tiny genre, and is now massive; graphic novels are burgeoning. Many books 'tie in' to films and television programmes. There is a newish sub-genre of biography titles called 'misery memoirs', based on a good, original title, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Some of the titles that have followed are, in my view, seriously tasteless. The Other Side of the Wall: How An Abused Little Girl Struggled to Make Her Screams Heard Above the Sound of The Neighbour's Television-Set As They Watched a Popular 1970s Television Crime Drama (I made that one up, but there are titles just like this).
When I do this work, I start inventing my own formats and titles, some cleverer and funnier than others, which will, thankfully, never see the light of day, but it keeps my brain working, sort of.
Here are some titles that I have come up with during my current spell of work:
No, I Don't Have Tourette's, I'm Just F**king P*ssed-Off (a humour title, obviously)If all of these seem a bit rude, that just reflects what I am seeing in the publishers' lists - a childish desire to shock, perhaps, filtering through to publishing from television and other culture? In some cases, yes, but the queer stories, no: after weeks of looking at princess titles for girls and football stories for boys, that really does appeal to me. When you look at publishers' lists, it is as though women's lib (remember that phrase?) had never happened!
Queer Stories for Children (in the under 5s fiction category, a series to make erstwhile critics of Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin see red)
Should I Lie About My Age to Get Laid? (one for the increasing ranks of the menopausal - self-help)
The great and the bad: Ayatollah Khomeini
In 2004 I was lucky enough to visit Iran as the guest of a family friend. One day another friend picked me up to drive me to Behesht Zahra, the large cemetery south of Tehran which has many graves of soldiers killed in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. There are more cheerful days out to be had in and around Tehran! But I also wanted to visit the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini which is nearby. Again, there are more cheerful days out to be had in and around Tehran! But I do like my history and don't believe in just going to see the pretty sights (of which Iran has many) when I visit a country.
On the drive south, along the dusty highway out of Tehran, my travel companion asked me: 'What do you think of Ayatollah Khomeini?'
This question floored me. I mean, I'm a woman from the West, wasn't it absolutely obvious what I would think of him? To my companion clearly it wasn't. This set me thinking, and I found an answer that had to acknowledge the factor that had made it possible for him to ask such a question.
'Well, Khomeini was a very strong and important figure.'
'Yes, he was,' my companion agreed, and we left it there.
P.S. A friend has suggested I am wasting my time raking over the coals to write a blogpost about the top 10 crimes of Thatcher. Of course, I had been going to follow this up with a top 10 crimes of Blair, which would be identical, only omitting points 1, 5 and 8, and replacing Tony Blair at no. 10 with Gordon Brown.
However, I do regret setting myself such a gruelling publishing schedule and have decided to spare you the turgid details of points 2-10, and end the series here. We all have other, fresher, fish to fry.
On the drive south, along the dusty highway out of Tehran, my travel companion asked me: 'What do you think of Ayatollah Khomeini?'
This question floored me. I mean, I'm a woman from the West, wasn't it absolutely obvious what I would think of him? To my companion clearly it wasn't. This set me thinking, and I found an answer that had to acknowledge the factor that had made it possible for him to ask such a question.
'Well, Khomeini was a very strong and important figure.'
'Yes, he was,' my companion agreed, and we left it there.
P.S. A friend has suggested I am wasting my time raking over the coals to write a blogpost about the top 10 crimes of Thatcher. Of course, I had been going to follow this up with a top 10 crimes of Blair, which would be identical, only omitting points 1, 5 and 8, and replacing Tony Blair at no. 10 with Gordon Brown.
However, I do regret setting myself such a gruelling publishing schedule and have decided to spare you the turgid details of points 2-10, and end the series here. We all have other, fresher, fish to fry.
Saturday, 13 June 2009
10 crimes of Thatcher (and, yes, I do know she’s broken her arm)
I have refused to join my Facebook friends in the Facebook group ‘Street party when Thatcher dies’. I don’t see any death as a cause for celebration, especially as I get closer to my own! In any case, I feel that Margaret Thatcher’s advancing dementia rather cheats them of any pleasure they could feel at her demise. Margaret Thatcher today is not the Margaret Thatcher we all knew and hated.
I realise that Margaret Thatcher is a sensitive topic in Barnet, but when all, in this 30th anniversary of her government’s beginning, are eulogising her contribution to society (ha!), I have to remind myself and my readers of all the harm she has done.
Here is my top 10 crimes of Thatcher. If I have missed any, or if you would like to argue why some of these things are actually good, please leave a comment. Likewise, if you would just like to castigate me as heartless and insensitive. I will write more about each crime of Thatcher in blogposts over the next few days, making a start today with no.1. But, first, here is the list:
Thatcher supported US President Ronald Reagan’s policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with the racist South African regime under apartheid. The kindest interpretation of this is that Reagan and Thatcher did not believe that opponents of apartheid could bring it down, or replace it with something better - this was the period of the Second Cold War, and they feared a Communist takeover in South Africa. The harshest interpretation is that they were soft on apartheid. They branded the majority political representative of South Africans, the African National Congress (ANC), a terrorist organisation; and vetoed United Nations sanctions against the apartheid regime. Either way, they gave comfort to the apartheid rulers and read the political situation very wrong. In 2006, during a visit to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, David Cameron disowned his Party’s former leader’s stance on apartheid.
I realise that Margaret Thatcher is a sensitive topic in Barnet, but when all, in this 30th anniversary of her government’s beginning, are eulogising her contribution to society (ha!), I have to remind myself and my readers of all the harm she has done.
Here is my top 10 crimes of Thatcher. If I have missed any, or if you would like to argue why some of these things are actually good, please leave a comment. Likewise, if you would just like to castigate me as heartless and insensitive. I will write more about each crime of Thatcher in blogposts over the next few days, making a start today with no.1. But, first, here is the list:
1. Propping up apartheid1. Propping up apartheid
2. 16- and 17-year-olds denied benefits
3. Warmongering
4. Anti-union laws
5. Poll tax
6. Mass unemployment
7. Privatisation
8. Section 28
9. Deregulation
10. Tony Blair
Thatcher supported US President Ronald Reagan’s policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with the racist South African regime under apartheid. The kindest interpretation of this is that Reagan and Thatcher did not believe that opponents of apartheid could bring it down, or replace it with something better - this was the period of the Second Cold War, and they feared a Communist takeover in South Africa. The harshest interpretation is that they were soft on apartheid. They branded the majority political representative of South Africans, the African National Congress (ANC), a terrorist organisation; and vetoed United Nations sanctions against the apartheid regime. Either way, they gave comfort to the apartheid rulers and read the political situation very wrong. In 2006, during a visit to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, David Cameron disowned his Party’s former leader’s stance on apartheid.
Iran: don't mourn, and organise for 26 June
I have many Iranian friends. They are all dismayed by the result of the Iranian presidential election, which shows incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning a comfortable majority in the first round, thereby avoiding a second round of voting, which might have united the opposition around a single candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.My friends are pretty convinced that Ahmadinejad's supporters in the state have fiddled the results, quite apart from the fact that he has also been travelling around the countryside distributing largesse to the rural poor, more or less buying their votes - another abuse of his power.
Here is an interesting report from the BBC.
The election process is deeply undemocratic, only people who accept the whole Islamic Republic regime can stand for election. But it is still a forum for politics to be done, and the fact that the incumbent might have used his position to fiddle this result marks a further deterioration in Iran's stunted democracy.
Many constituencies are involved in the fight for democracy in Iran. One among them is the trade union movement, heavily repressed. Several international trade union federations have organised a day of support for them, on Friday 26 June. I will post details of events in the UK once they are finalised.
Iran: don't mourn, organise (although that is often easier said than done).
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Barnet's Tory councillors close ranks
I've just read Lib Dem Councillor Duncan Macdonald's blogpost about the Cabinet meeting last night, and about a meeting of Hadley residents he went to afterwards where the Conservative councillors "intimated that they were not keen on the decision" to cut the sheltered housing wardens.
It reminded me to post something about the email I sent to all the Conservative councillors on Sunday evening, an 11th hour request to them to think again about the proposed cut. (Roger Tichborne has published the email on his blog The Barnet Eye.)
I didn't have any replies at all to that email, except one, an Out of Office AutoReply from Councillor Terence Burton which said:
It reminded me to post something about the email I sent to all the Conservative councillors on Sunday evening, an 11th hour request to them to think again about the proposed cut. (Roger Tichborne has published the email on his blog The Barnet Eye.)
I didn't have any replies at all to that email, except one, an Out of Office AutoReply from Councillor Terence Burton which said:
Sorry, but I am currently away and unable to read or answer e-mails, I am with the Veterans & schoolchildren in Normandy for the 65th Anniversary of D-Day Commemorations until June 10th.Rather ironic. It would be nice to hear from Councillor Burton on his return - whether he thinks the cuts to sheltered housing are an appropriate sign of our gratitude. But I expect he will be keeping as mum as the rest of the Conservative councillors.
God Bless them and thank them for what they did for ALL of us!
Monday, 8 June 2009
Barnet's Conservative Cabinet swings the axe on sheltered housing
A quick report from the Cabinet meeting tonight. In short, as we feared they would, Barnet’s Conservative Cabinet voted to cut the sheltered housing wardens, saving the council a fairly paltry £400,000 but at a high social cost.
Council Leader Mike Freer dealt in his characteristically graceless manner with a lot of angry voters: his mantra on these occasions is becoming, well, if you don’t like it, you can vote us out next year. Mike “cross-in-a-box-once-every-four-years” Freer’s vision of democracy.
We held a lively protest that got a lot of press coverage – the assault on sheltered housing is, belatedly, becoming a national issue. You can see the BBC London news report here.
Mike Freer is interviewed and says: “The council’s finances are actually quite robust, so that’s not the driver. The driver is predominantly about making a service fit for purpose. ...we have about 15 hundred settings, a thousand of them already have a floating, visiting warden, only one third have a resident warden.”
If financial considerations are not the driver, why is one of the main points in the consultation document:
They say it is so that they can spend more money on other elderly residents in Barnet – show us the figures. Vague promises about extending the residual sheltered housing support service to other Barnet elderly are just that: vague promises. We have consistently called for levelling up of services, not levelling down: sharing a far smaller budget among many more people is no way to increase 'fairness'.
The sheltered housing warden cut is about saving Barnet council money; the rest is justification. I could find a reason to make cuts, if I wanted to make cuts. The point is I don't. Freer goes on and on about how central government’s settlement for Barnet is too low: then lead the community in a fight for more money. And stop justifying and making cuts!
Council Leader Mike Freer dealt in his characteristically graceless manner with a lot of angry voters: his mantra on these occasions is becoming, well, if you don’t like it, you can vote us out next year. Mike “cross-in-a-box-once-every-four-years” Freer’s vision of democracy.
We held a lively protest that got a lot of press coverage – the assault on sheltered housing is, belatedly, becoming a national issue. You can see the BBC London news report here.
Mike Freer is interviewed and says: “The council’s finances are actually quite robust, so that’s not the driver. The driver is predominantly about making a service fit for purpose. ...we have about 15 hundred settings, a thousand of them already have a floating, visiting warden, only one third have a resident warden.”
If financial considerations are not the driver, why is one of the main points in the consultation document:
Barnet Council is proposing three major changes:In the document, there is a lot more, an awful lot more, along those lines. In short, in the news clip Freer is not telling the truth about why they want to make this cut.
To reduce the amount of funding paid at present for services in sheltered housing and similar locations. This would contribute toward reductions in expenditure that are necessary for Barnet Council to set a balanced budget for next year....
Proposal 1 – reduction in funding for support services in sheltered housing
The council has to make savings of £12 million next year, and it proposes that services for older people in Sheltered Housing should contribute £950,000 to this total....
The rest of the savings of £950,000 each year would be used by the council to enable services for older people in Barnet to be maintained. Next year, the council will have to make savings of £12m in order to make sure expenditure is in line with income.
They say it is so that they can spend more money on other elderly residents in Barnet – show us the figures. Vague promises about extending the residual sheltered housing support service to other Barnet elderly are just that: vague promises. We have consistently called for levelling up of services, not levelling down: sharing a far smaller budget among many more people is no way to increase 'fairness'.
The sheltered housing warden cut is about saving Barnet council money; the rest is justification. I could find a reason to make cuts, if I wanted to make cuts. The point is I don't. Freer goes on and on about how central government’s settlement for Barnet is too low: then lead the community in a fight for more money. And stop justifying and making cuts!
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Freer's way: silencing the majority
Trying to better understand Barnet council leader Mike Freer, I read this December 2007 article by him, published on the Hendon Times website:
What would it have cost Freer, before he swung the axe, to listen to one of the sheltered housing residents, David Young, organiser of a petition opposing the proposed cuts?
Judging the moodThis political philosophy gives Freer no clues as to what to do when a part of the hitherto silent majority gets rather vocal against a council proposal, as they are doing over the proposed sheltered housing warden cuts. In this instance, he has decided he doesn't want to hear their voices at all: he cancelled the May residents' forums and has turned down a request by a member of the public to address the Cabinet meeting this Monday 8 June, before the Cabinet makes its decision. Addressing the Cabinet is allowed for under the council's governance rules, but is at the discretion of the Leader.
Yesterday I went with the Chief Executive to present to an awards judging panel: the Council is shortlisted for two awards... one of the judges asked a question which did get to the heart of some of the issues: Given all the infrastructure issues we had identified as a problem of the growth in the Borough past and expected, had we won over the residents???
Well as politicians we often take silence as acquiescence - but is this a fair assumption? But if silence isn't acquiescence, is it apathy? Or is it that the Council simply goes on around our residents and we are largely invisible to the vast majority. So what do we do? I don't suppose there is a magic forumla, every attempt at engagement has its faults - even the Leader Listens events (which get audiences from 12 to 70) aren't perfect - but interestingly I ask every audience if they have attended a Resident's Forum and the vast majority haven't. So whilst not perfect, the Leader Listens do seem to get a raft of different people. So I guess the answer to the question is - in the absence of other information, silence has to be acquiescence - isn't that how democracy works? The silent majority rule OK!!
What would it have cost Freer, before he swung the axe, to listen to one of the sheltered housing residents, David Young, organiser of a petition opposing the proposed cuts?
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Join the lobby on 8 June: stop these cuts to services for the elderly!
The council have published the results of their consultation on sheltered housing in Barnet, and recommendations for its future. Their report shows they have decided to ignore the result of the consultation and to proceed to axe sheltered housing wardens.
The options to be considered by the Cabinet when it meets on Monday 8 June are:
(1) cut £950,000 from services for the elderly by getting rid of sheltered housing wardens and means testing the alarm service in sheltered housing schemes;
(2) cut £600,000 from services for the elderly by operating a reduced wardens service and means testing the alarm service;
(3) cut £400,000 fron services for the elderly by getting rid of sheltered housing wardens and retaining the alarm service for all;
(4) don't cut services for the elderly and leave the current set-up in sheltered housing alone.
The option that those who wrote the report recommend to the Cabinet is (3). When the cuts were first proposed it was £950,000 that seemed most likely. Some people might be tempted to think that this represents some sort of climbdown by the council. Perhaps they have responded to the overwhelming feeling against the proposed cuts; looking at the proposals it seems more likely that they have worked out that unless everyone uses it, the alarm scheme becomes non-viable. In that case, what we are left with is what they wanted to do all along: axe the wardens. This seems more and more mean-minded when you realise that the budget saving will be £400,000, and not even this year, as they have to give six months' notice to the organisations providing the sheltered housing schemes.
This Tory administration has learned nothing from the consultation, which showed overwhelming support for the wardens and a firm belief that they enhance people's quality of life and help them to live independently for longer than would otherwise be possible. Wardens prevent bad things from happening to elderly people, whereas the alarm system is only there to deal with the aftermath of an accident or emergency.
I urge everyone to read the report, particularly those sections detailing the consultation, which are very poignant. More than that, rouse yourself to come to the lobby of the Cabinet meeting on 8 June. We will gather at 6pm outside Barnet House, Whetstone for the lobby, and go into the public gallery at 7pm for the meeting itself.
Beyond the 8th what can we do? We know that there are more cuts in the pipeline in the next few years. With regard to sheltered housing, a sum of about £400,000 has been allocated to an interim 'floating' support service to substitute for the loss of the wardens: how long will that sum be safe, at the hands of this council, that can always invent a justification for any cut it wants to make? If they won't defend us, we will have to defend ourselves!
The options to be considered by the Cabinet when it meets on Monday 8 June are:
(1) cut £950,000 from services for the elderly by getting rid of sheltered housing wardens and means testing the alarm service in sheltered housing schemes;
(2) cut £600,000 from services for the elderly by operating a reduced wardens service and means testing the alarm service;
(3) cut £400,000 fron services for the elderly by getting rid of sheltered housing wardens and retaining the alarm service for all;
(4) don't cut services for the elderly and leave the current set-up in sheltered housing alone.
The option that those who wrote the report recommend to the Cabinet is (3). When the cuts were first proposed it was £950,000 that seemed most likely. Some people might be tempted to think that this represents some sort of climbdown by the council. Perhaps they have responded to the overwhelming feeling against the proposed cuts; looking at the proposals it seems more likely that they have worked out that unless everyone uses it, the alarm scheme becomes non-viable. In that case, what we are left with is what they wanted to do all along: axe the wardens. This seems more and more mean-minded when you realise that the budget saving will be £400,000, and not even this year, as they have to give six months' notice to the organisations providing the sheltered housing schemes.
This Tory administration has learned nothing from the consultation, which showed overwhelming support for the wardens and a firm belief that they enhance people's quality of life and help them to live independently for longer than would otherwise be possible. Wardens prevent bad things from happening to elderly people, whereas the alarm system is only there to deal with the aftermath of an accident or emergency.
I urge everyone to read the report, particularly those sections detailing the consultation, which are very poignant. More than that, rouse yourself to come to the lobby of the Cabinet meeting on 8 June. We will gather at 6pm outside Barnet House, Whetstone for the lobby, and go into the public gallery at 7pm for the meeting itself.
Beyond the 8th what can we do? We know that there are more cuts in the pipeline in the next few years. With regard to sheltered housing, a sum of about £400,000 has been allocated to an interim 'floating' support service to substitute for the loss of the wardens: how long will that sum be safe, at the hands of this council, that can always invent a justification for any cut it wants to make? If they won't defend us, we will have to defend ourselves!
Monday, 1 June 2009
Teach Yourself Resilience
I am working as a freelance at a trade magazine. I've worked on and off there for years. The staff have changed a lot over those years. I am one of the longest serving members!
It used to be a cosy, family firm, we knocked off for a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in the office at 4pm on Fridays. It didn't make a lot of money, but it was respected in the industry, and the family when they sold the company (boo!) made a million pounds.
They sold it to a multinational. "Bean counters!" as our editorial manager said. She was made redundant soon after, along with a few other long-standing (ie, more expensive) members of staff.
The cuts and rationalisations have gone on ever since; each time I go back I know fewer and fewer people, not just because of natural wastage, but increasingly because more and more people have been made redundant. Two more went this week. At least in the public sector you have some warning if you face redundancy; often in the private sector they can just tell you not to come back next week.
Each time it happens it as though someone has died; there is a gap where there was a person. Everyone spreads out a bit more, the computer equipment they used is snaffled if it's better; everyone has to work that little bit harder.
The IT staff were 'let go'; the company now has a contract with Tata. If you want some help with your IT you have to email Tata. If the request conforms to Tata's service level agreement, they will email their staff member and tell him to leave his office down the corridor and come and help you.
I understand there are hard-hearted business books that attempt to teach us that we should all have resilience training in order to withstand and deal with the shocks that are 'natural' in today's job market and the modern economy, but I think they have it wrong. The resilience training we need is that which will teach us to stand up for ourselves and say that this is a crazy way of organising things.
P.S. A well-wisher has pointed out that I might sound rather chauvinistic mentioning the name of an IT consultancy based in India. I too roll my eyes when I hear people going on about Indian call-centres as though they threatened British civilisation - after all, the fact that we have British civilisation at all has a lot to do with the subjugation and massive exploitation of the Indian sub-continent. And much that we take for granted as British has been lifted from imperial conquests. Moreover, I am in favour of the development of India's economy and more people there getting jobs, as everywhere.
My aim in this case was to demonstrate the increasingly absurd workings of capitalism when someone in the next room is not allowed to help me until someone geographically very distant tells him that he can, based not on my need or his ability, but on a piece of paper haggled over by my management, based in the US, and his management, based in India.
On a personal note, not only are some of my best friends of Asian origin, but I once made a memorable trip to a Tata factory in Bihar, northern India, and actually harbour an absurd personal affection for the brand.
It used to be a cosy, family firm, we knocked off for a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in the office at 4pm on Fridays. It didn't make a lot of money, but it was respected in the industry, and the family when they sold the company (boo!) made a million pounds.
They sold it to a multinational. "Bean counters!" as our editorial manager said. She was made redundant soon after, along with a few other long-standing (ie, more expensive) members of staff.
The cuts and rationalisations have gone on ever since; each time I go back I know fewer and fewer people, not just because of natural wastage, but increasingly because more and more people have been made redundant. Two more went this week. At least in the public sector you have some warning if you face redundancy; often in the private sector they can just tell you not to come back next week.
Each time it happens it as though someone has died; there is a gap where there was a person. Everyone spreads out a bit more, the computer equipment they used is snaffled if it's better; everyone has to work that little bit harder.
The IT staff were 'let go'; the company now has a contract with Tata. If you want some help with your IT you have to email Tata. If the request conforms to Tata's service level agreement, they will email their staff member and tell him to leave his office down the corridor and come and help you.
I understand there are hard-hearted business books that attempt to teach us that we should all have resilience training in order to withstand and deal with the shocks that are 'natural' in today's job market and the modern economy, but I think they have it wrong. The resilience training we need is that which will teach us to stand up for ourselves and say that this is a crazy way of organising things.
P.S. A well-wisher has pointed out that I might sound rather chauvinistic mentioning the name of an IT consultancy based in India. I too roll my eyes when I hear people going on about Indian call-centres as though they threatened British civilisation - after all, the fact that we have British civilisation at all has a lot to do with the subjugation and massive exploitation of the Indian sub-continent. And much that we take for granted as British has been lifted from imperial conquests. Moreover, I am in favour of the development of India's economy and more people there getting jobs, as everywhere.
My aim in this case was to demonstrate the increasingly absurd workings of capitalism when someone in the next room is not allowed to help me until someone geographically very distant tells him that he can, based not on my need or his ability, but on a piece of paper haggled over by my management, based in the US, and his management, based in India.
On a personal note, not only are some of my best friends of Asian origin, but I once made a memorable trip to a Tata factory in Bihar, northern India, and actually harbour an absurd personal affection for the brand.
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