Kevin Keegan gets support of Newcastle City Council?

There are several reports in the press of Newcastle City Council's support for Keegan. In a motion proposed by Labour Leader Nick Forbes and seconded by Lib dems (and in a show of cross party unity -  highlighting just how important this is) they called on NUFC to get it sorted quickly "recognising the wide scale public support for Kevin Keegan" 

Not that i am trying to downplay the significance of this for United fans, but just a thought... is this what the council is there for? I am waiting for the motion from councillors opposed Nexus's plans to sell off the metro "recognising the wide scale public support for a publicly owned and run metro system" and telling Nexus to end this speculation now and say no to a privately run metro..rather than waste thousands of pounds of our money checking whether to go with the in-house bid or a private one?

(PS there is no truth at all in the rumour that this post was just an opportunity to put a picture of keegan in tight shorts on this blog!)

amaizing maze

A bit "corny" i know, but for anyone in the northwest, next Saturday its a must.

Last night, me, Lee, Kim and Anna went to "Moonlight maze". Sounds a bit odd, but Lee is a bit maze crazy (last summer in Barcelona he made us walk miles in the middle of nowhere to see a park with a maze in it) and so when he heard about the Moonlight Maze he made us go

(Lee as a zombie!)

It was fantastic.. you take torches (& a hipflask!), get sent off with a flag on a stick in case you cannot get out, and go round this massive maze made out of Maize (yes hence "a-maize-ing") find bits of maps to help you find your way out... all in the pitch dark, and what a fantastic night.. (there another maze too, a massive trampolene & stuff for the kids) but go at night. Last chance is next Saturday 13 September!   

For the website visit here

Pretty sure we will be visiting Spookyworld this October too!

More council houses yes, but giving money to struggling building contractors No

At the weekend i read in the Newcastle Papers that Newcastle City Council could be the first in the country to step in to "help shore up the housing market"

Because it is "commercially sensitive" they cannot give more details and there is nothing on either Newcastle City Council or Your Homes Newcastle (the almo that runs housing) saying how it will work.

What is clear is the present credit crunch, economic crisis, fall in pay for especially low paid workers means many more need good quality council housing and mortgages are not what will help the thousands in newcastle who need a secure affordable home.

But if there is money to support council housing how should we spend it?

Private businesses have made millions in the last few years building houses in the northeast after years upon years of rising prices where those with money have invested in buying up land knowing that its value is going up, building apartments to sell to businesses that have not helped the most vulnerable in the city. They have profited handsomely at our expense from the market, and this has been contrasted by no new housing built in the public sector.

So now that things are tough, are we helping them out with "cash flow problems" as one of the articles suggests. Yes the council will of course get the housing at a discount, but by buying up 15 houses on the new estate are we making it viable for the private company to still make a good profit on this estate... Are we giving public money, yet again to private profit.

Should we not instead look at building decent houses, that kind that we know are needed, not just those that private sector can't shift, and forcibly taking over run down and empty pockets to make them suitable for tenants. 

More on Keep Metro Public campaign

Tonight i went to a well attended meeting of this newly launched campaign. 

The meeting was introduced by RMT and UNITE organisers and then elected a chair and secretary and went on to discuss the campaign and future actions.

The meeting had a good number of RMT / UNITE metro workers as well as trade unionists, students and the left.

Future proposals were discussed including:

- lobbies of tenders meeting;

- lobbies of PTA and councillors;

- mass leafleting

- street theatre;

- public meetings;

- strike action;

- public referendums and more

The next action is:

Tues 9th September meet outside St James Stadium at 10.30am

for a protest against the future tenders for the metro services who will be meeting to find out more.

The next meeting is:

7th October at 6pm at newcastle labour club, leazes park road, newcastle

more posts soon

latest on local government pay negotiations

Unison's news on its website, as well as the information on negotiations so far and the statement agreed by the unions and employers make grim and contradictory reading

We have been told that unison wants to resolve this dispute as soon as possible, but that the framework for talks is until end of December... when it would be too late to take action if the best deal they come up with is still crap!

We have gone into open ended discussions, calling off all, even selective action for negotiations which it now appears by reading the various statements was with nothing on the table, nothing at all.   Calling off action and it reality even without action, no other campaigning has been carried out or called for by our leadership (yes its been summer, but we new that when we called the action for July? didnt we?) 

So there is a problem with the leadership and by this I mean the real leadership at the top of our unions.

We in Unison allowed this to happen.  The left allowed this to happen.  The majority of the left did not debate how to hold leadership to account, or how to win this dispute... just calling for more or all out action, or saying wait until October when we can unite with others, isnt a strategy its more a "lets keep our fingers crossed and hope the other unions come to our rescue"

We haven't got a real rank and file mechanism for bringing together local gov activists across unions, branches and regions and this has helped the "leadership" get away with this crap 

Some of us in Workers Liberty and with support from other good activists helped initiate a email group but this is still only a tiny fraction of that of the health activist list. And this list growing to help share reports from branches, not just of action, but issues linked to single status results or negotiations, and other local conditions that can influence how we can fight over pay. 

The leaderships consultations over pay show that they have little understanding of whats going on in branches, asking for information on holidays (very very varied with many many authorities adding extra days leave) and annual leave. They think these can form part of the negotiations.

So we need to learn from this and build up the rank and file we need.

But for now we should challenge the leadership to lead:

- pull out of negotiations to call action; selective or otherwise alongside other unions (close the schools alongside the teachers?) ; close the depots and street cleaning alongside the GMB etc - Unless they put something on the table to make staying at the table worthwhile

- meet now in a high profile manner with other unions in pay dispute including our comrades in scotland with the message that we will coordinate action

- call open activists meetings in regions (not just officers) to build local protests and lobbies of MPs about to return to parliament

- say no to multi year deals when inflation is completely unpredictable and we know we could be leading our members into years of cuts in pay.