I thought that post would go the way of most women-and-shopping stories (and indeed of women-and-anything stories), but things went better than that. Thousands of people turned up to read and rightwingers went into tailspin – two very good reasons to push on.
The chance to hit pro-cuts businesses where they’ll feel it is the other good reason to push on. Consumer boycotts can be effective, especially in an online age where reputation control is painful for corporates.
Only ten days after business leaders signed a Telegraph letter backing Osborne’s cuts, consumers are redefining their notions of ethical business on the local scene. Ethical business cannot, by definition, cheerlead a widely-criticised cuts programme that threatens jobs, economic recovery and retail and local commerce. Companies with brandnames that become synonymous with unethical business have good reason to feel the fear.
Ethical consumer groups point to – with considerable justification – a proud history of successful buyer pressure. Centuries-old anti-slavery sugar boycotts, the anti-fur trade campaigns of recent decades, consumer boycotts of battery-farmed animals and eggs – ultimately, all had profound effects on public perception and corporate reputation. A sulky corporate response goes down like a cup of the cold proverbial in the viral era. Continue reading →
I’m joining those who have decide to boycott every single company that those business leaders represent.
There are two reasons for this:
1) The first is that leaders on the list take us for suckers – a trait I rarely care for in people I spend my money with.
They wrote:
“There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.”
The letter authors decided the advantages of signing the letter meant more than being straight with their customer base.
And they weren’t straight with their customers at all. Liberal Conspiracy was leaked a private email that clearly demonstrated that people on the list had no confidence whatsoever in the nation’s ‘improved economic performance’ or the ‘generation of more employment opportunities’ of which their Telegraph letter spoke. Osama Saeed had the names of those who, when not flying pro-cuts and pro-government flags, were laying thousands of people off and/or telling grim tales about the realities of lie of the fiscal land.
2) I do my best to spend my money with ethical businesses.
Companies that support the CSR are failed corporate citizens. They back an ideological programme of cuts that will throw thousands out of work and onto the mercy of a welfare system that itself will barely exist. In private, they have no suggestions for growth. In public, they’re collaborators who run a strong second line in denial. I would no more spend my money with them than I would with companies that beat t-shirts out of child workers in Bangladesh. Continue reading →
Mr McKeating’s take on Red Ed’s failure to turn up to today’s TUC rally against the cuts:
No less nauseating is the sight of once-and-future disappointment Ed Miliband checking his balls in at the door. Would he attend the TUC rally against Tory cuts, he was asked during the Labour leadership campaign. ‘I’ll attend the rally, definitely,’ said the Left’s last ‘hope’ in a pitch for the union vote. Now he’s in the big chair and lacking the guts or guile to fight (or, God forbid, defend) his ‘Red Ed’ nickname, we hear ‘there was never a firm commitment that he would attend the rally‘.
Fading hopes, then, of Red Ed leaping out of a cake for Friday’s reading of the Lawful Industrial Action bill – union members’ last real chance for a change to anti-union laws that would make striking to save services and jobs a genuine option. Alan Johnson’s tub-thumping about cuts means nothing. When it comes to standing side-by-side with the average working punter, Labour’s in-group is – as it has always been – on the first plane out.
I can tell you this, people: the unions plan to stick tight to Red Ed, no matter how Ed and his supporters try to cut them.
I went to a House of Commons lobby for John McDonnell’s Lawful Industrial Action Bill, where two points were repeatedly observed: 1) the bill has its second reading this Friday and 2) union members expect Labour MPs to turn up to vote it on. We were there to knock on MPs’ doors and make that point directly. We like to think that Red Ed was thrilled that we were there.
We also like to think he’d back the bill. He wouldn’t need big balls to do it – the Lawful Industrial Action Bill is wet and watered-down enough to appeal to, well, any flinching Murdoch bitch. “It’s so bloody moderate it’s undermined my revolutionary credentials,” McDonnell rightly observed. It’s so bloody moderate that the TUC conference gave it full backing in September. Red Ed could hardly be burned.
The point of the bill is to end the undemocratic employer practice of challenging strike ballots on the ‘strength’ of minor balloting errors.
Employers successfully overturn ballot results where unions make small mistakes with member information – where a tiny number of addresses or job titles are incorrect, and that sort of thing. A proposed strike action with a 90% Yes vote goes no further if an employer finds holes in the union’s paperwork.
Things are even less democratic when employers are responsible for the holes. In Johnston Press vs the NUJ this year, for example, the NUJ was forced to abandon a journalists’ strike when the employer claimed to ’employ no journalists,’ even though Johnston Press’ website stated that it employed 1900 journalists and the affected journalists wanted to strike as such.
As Bob Crow observed, it’s not beneath employers to change people’s job titles quickly to scupper a ballot. The onus is on the union to make sure its member records match the employer’s. That can be hard to do if member job information changes and nobody is immediately informed. Extreme pedantry is a feature of some employer challenges: only last year, EDF won an injunction against the RMT because a strike notice defined the potential strikers as engineers and technicians, rather listing exact job titles.
The problem is that employers are making hay with definitions of ‘accidental.’
McDonnell’s bill would amend the act. He wants ‘small accidental failures in ballots and strike notices’ to be disregarded and burdens of proof moved to employers – they would need to show that member records and strike notices were substantially (rather than slightly) inaccurate.
McDonnell hopes to bring UK strike legislation in line with the rest of electoral law “where an election’s outcome can’t be challenged if it was conducted substantially in accordance with the law.” (Imagine the theatrics if Boris was chucked out on account of a few misspelt names on the electoral roll).
McDonnell rightly puts the boot into Labour for not tweaking this law – and for not overturning Thatcher’s appalling anti-union laws full stop – while it had the chance. Labour’s failure then leaves thousands now even more vulnerable to the coalition’s war on jobs. Doesn’t matter how many Yes votes a strike ballot gets if an employer and a few hanging judges dropkick each of them out of frame:
For those who remain of the romantic view that employers live only to negotiate with staff, particularly in a recession, here is Matt Wrack of the Fire Bridgades Union describing an all-too-common modern-day evil – where employers use the legendary HR1 process to sack an entire workforce and tell people they’ll only get their jobs back if they sign new contracts on lesser salaries and conditions.
I’ve met so many people who never dreamed that would happen to them.
And here’s Crow reminding Labour why it is called Labour. I don’t care whether or not the RMT is affiliated to the party, or if it true that Uncle Bob is most of the way out to lunch. For once, he was right on the ball:
A few people have asked for links to the article I published in the late 1990s about my time as a prostitute.
I don’t think the magazine (Auckland’s Metro) has an archive online, so have reproduced the article below.
A couple of thoughts first:
I thought the article might be useful, because it isn’t particularly dramatic. It’s prostitution from the perspective of someone who wasn’t forced into the work. I wasn’t trafficked, or there to finance a drug habit (although I was a very heavy drinker, which meant I was depressed and unwilling to focus on other earning options for any length of time). I was there for the money.
In much of the modern socialist narrative, all prostitutes are pressed into trade – by traffickers, by drug and alcohol addiction and/or by personal experiences of sexual abuse. In this narrative, all johns are brutes and all brothelkeepers are bloodsuckers.
There are many truths in this narrative, but it is my feeling that the negativity of it skews the point. It is unfair to sex workers as a result. Prostitution in itself is not synonymous with debasement. Stories of trafficked, bullied and beaten women are stories of abuse, not of prostitution per se.
Away from the abuse – and prostitution does exist away from abuse – prostitution is retail. Describing it a trade would probably be overplaying the romance – you need looks and/or a gift for indifference, rather than genuine skill – but it is certainly enterprise.
More than that – it’s enterprise in which many women have an unusual – for us – advantage. It’s lucrative. It’s one of the few occupations where women can expect a good fiscal return. That doesn’t go for everyone in the field, but it certainly goes for some. Men shell out for sex. When I was working, girls got about NZ$80 to $100 an hour (the spending equivalent today of about £100), with more for extras if you were in those markets. Five or six clients a shift earned you a consultant’s wage.
Prostitution buys you time. Even now that I’m past it, I sometimes think about making a glorious return to the field – when money is tight, and/or I get sick of having to sacrifice large chunks of the day to the day job. In the end, if you’re not among the abused, prostitution is no more or less dispiriting than the middle-tier jobs and lives we’re supposed to aspire to.
As I say, I drank very heavily in those days.
—
1998
The one question you ask yourself when you’re working as a hooker is ‘Do I care that I am doing this? Do I care?’
You never settle on an answer, but your mind seems to want to. You’re standing in a warm, dark (curtains drawn), fusty little room, listening to people outside trotting home from work, and listening to the dolt you’re with whispering that he wants you sitting on the bed with your legs parted so that he can see, and your mind is trying to pinpoint your response. Do I care? Continue reading →