Where consultations go to die

Posted on by
2

A helpful someone has sent me comments submitted by users of Hammersmith and Fulham’s soon-to-be-disbanded home library service.

The disbanding of the home library service is part of a general Hammersmith and Fulham council assault on library services and staff – staff across libraries are being downgraded and posts cut as the council attempts to squeeze a few coins in savings out of this most popular and blameless of services.

The home library service is run from Barons court by a small, experienced team that is much valued by the elderly and disabled residents that it services. The council has told local libraries that from now on, they must run their own home library services, which of course they won’t be able to. At best, a home library visiting service will become a tacked-on extra. The staff cuts and downgradings will make it almost impossible for local libraries to spare staff to visit homes with the books, videos and CDs that home library users appreciate.

And they do appreciate those things, to say the least. The comments below make that clear.

The comments were made earlier this year when the council was ‘consulting’ (easily our era’s most meaningless word and act) local residents about its plans to dispense with the dedicated home library service. The really galling part is that the comments never saw the light of day. Word is that the forms they were on were shoved into a box that was, in its turn, shoved into a corner from which it only recently emerged. Even if the comments did end up in a report somewhere (and I haven’t seen it), they’ve been ignored. The dedicated home library service is coming to an end.

Anyway – here are some of the comments from home library service users. If nothing else (and there is nothing else), they show that locals are as passionate about their library services as Hammersmith and Fulham council is about eradicating services that don’t make a financial return:

“The Home Delivery Service, and its first rate reliable always cheerful staff. They know what to choose for each individual customer and find what is ordered.”

“As our Home service scheme is based there (Barons Court Library) I wouldn’t approve of any alternative arrangements which I feel might make working conditions for our lovely delivery people more strenuous.”

“My husband and I get through over 15 books (large) print), loads of videos, DVDs and CDs in the three-week period between visits. Without this service we would be left twiddling our fingers!”

“No trust could compare with the service at present. They have become “friends for life” rather than different individuals coming to us, if the service is farmed out to trusts or volunteers.”

“The Home Library Service is a life saver for us as we are both old and even if we were taken to a library we wouldn’t be able to carry the heavy books we enjoy so much.”

“Desperate to have the visiting library continue this service. Will sadly miss my supply of books to cover lonely days. In my case, being disabled, the books and whoever delivers them each time is important. Always such charming people, bringing a chirpy atmosphere.”

“The staff that comes to me always takes the trouble to bring books written by authors I like and also the H&F News which keeps me in touch with the outside world. Money is not the only answer to change, so do please think carefully on what you intend to do.”

“Barons Court Library and its services are wonderful, and it houses a wonderful Outreach service. The staff have worked under pressure for many years. The range of books and knowledgeable staff it’s time you rewarded their hard work and not downsized. It would be like losing my right arm.”

“The Home Library Service – my husband and I are very old and unable to get about much. The HLS has brought us books, talking books and DVDs every three weeks and the service is very much appreciated. I realise it may cost but since the number of people over 85 is increasing, the demand for such a service will also increase.”

“As I’m housebound my only way I could receive my library books is the Home Library. Without this service I would no longer enjoy the pleasure of reading.”

“I am not able to visit a library. My own service – The Home Library – is, as it always has been in mind exceptionally good and I judge the three people who run it exceptional also. To run the service on one full-time and two part-time employees is well nigh unbelievable. Not only do they bring the books but knowing one’s tastes they choose books also. I have always enjoyed their choices; they are well thought out and always interesting. These three people are so much more than ordinary library clerks and I would judge pretty well irreplaceable. The service they give me is of the highest order.”

“I totally depend on the regular service provided by the staff of the Home Library Service.”

More soon.

Living it up on JSA

Posted on by
1

From 2007:

I meet Paul Thomas, 40, when I nearly tread on his hand. He’s sitting on the pavement by the door of the big petrol station on Shoreditch High Street. He asks everybody who enters the store if they can spare any change. He looks tired, unkempt and – well, a bit on the sad side, as we all probably would.

Doubtless, the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and the gone-and-largely-forgotten James Purnell would admire Paul’s can-do approach to life on a benefit: although horribly (and clinically) depressed and reeling from the loss of his job as a maintenance worker, he gets out to beg most afternoons.

I imagine that Duncan Smith would think that Thomas a great candidate for a few weeks’ compulsory gutter-cleaning here and there. He’s already sitting around on the side of the road, so the state wouldn’t even have to fund his commute. Thus millennium society restores the halt and the lame.

What Thomas needs, of course, is a proper job and help finding one. He liked working. He says he worked for ten years as a caretaker at the Trinity church round the corner before he was made redundant about 18 months ago.

“It can happen really easily that you’re out here. If you told me two years ago that I would be out here, I would never have thought that.” It is hardly surprising that depression has got the better of him. It nearly gets the better of me while we chat. If he had a reasonable job and enough to live on, the rest would probably take care of itself.

Continue reading →

How cuts reduce us all

Posted on by
5

Updated 7 November 2010:

This morning, I went to the Shepherd’s Bush library on the Westfield shopping site to help out at a small protest that a group of Hammersmith and Fulham librarians had organised.

The librarians’ salaries (library assistants earn about £21,000) are due to be cut as part of Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council’s gleeful pursuit of ‘savings’ and local annihilation of any notion of community, or public service. The home library service is to be dismantled and word is that some local libraries will shut.

Tis my view that closing local libraries ranks near book-burning as a social contribution, but what would I know, I suppose. Hammersmith and Fulham libraries will close and the free reading sessions and activities for kids they provide will disappear, along with the books, CDs, DVDs and free computers that so many enjoy and need. The reading and IT classes for adults that many libraries run will take their place among history’s sweeter dead, like sonnets. Thus it is that the Tories plan to build a happy, deficit-free tomorrow. My main hope in life these days is that I won’t be around to see it.

Anyway – the protest. Three or four librarians – all middle aged women – stood outside the library for about an hour in their own free time and handed leaflets about their worries to members of the public. I was there – no spring chicken myself – along with two long-time reps from the Hammersmith Unison office, and a well-known local blogger and a reporter. My leg hurt and we were all moving slowly because it was cold and we were all getting old. Armed rebellion was hardly on our agenda.

But hey-ho and you never know – suddenly, we found ourselves surrounded by four or five very heavy-looking guys in black jackets – Westfield security. Thus the high camp began. These guys were ridiculously combative – Christ knows what they had on the PS3 back in the office. At least one member of our group was hanging out to meet the resource-allocation genius that decided to send in five heavies to take out three librarians.

The first guy in the video below was incredibly aggressive – ‘you can’t be here. You haven’t got permission. You have to get out.’

He got very upset when he saw I was filming. He came after me down the street, putting his hand out every now and then towards me – I thought he was going to try and grab the camera and maybe even grab me. I hurried down the road – another slow-moving, near-fogey on the run – then back up Uxbridge Road and down a side street so that I could film the scene from across the road. So far, so very tragic. People on the sidewalk were laughing, watching my little legs trotting off to safety.

You can see three of these guys on the film, standing over the women who were protesting:

You can also see one of the guys rush at the camera on Chris’ blog.

There were so many security guys hassling the librarians that people walking by observed that security inside Westfield itself had to be compromised and that now was the time to start thieving.

So. This is how public sector cuts for the hell of it look when you get down to it, people – four or five probably-badly-paid security guys trying to score points off three greying librarians on a pavement. And all for a handful of change in public-sector savings. I don’t think that this is us at our best, you know. I’d cry, if I was the type.

Here’s one of the library assistants – a ten year veteran of the job – explaining the reasons why she wanted to hand out leaflets (it was her day off, so she wasn’t on library time). She also talks about the work library assistants do.

I’ve had a lot of stupid days in my life, but today really took the biscuit.

The point of boycotting pro-cuts retailers

Posted on by
12

I posted on Sunday about my plans to stop shopping with retailers whose senior managers publicly champion George Osborne’s cruel, ideologically-driven spending cuts.

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 →

Fair trade starts at home

Posted on by
35

Last week, 35 deluded business leaders wrote to the Telegraph to praise George Osborne’s cruel spending review.

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.

It also seemed that many of the 35 had reasons for cheerleading Osborne’s mad plans – reasons that spoke of vested, rather than national, interests. Arup has just been awarded a major rail contract by the government. Another outstanding piece of Liberal Conspiracy work told us that BT’s government contracts had just been renewed and deals done on government contracts with Microsoft and AVEVA.

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 →

Exit stage left

Posted on by
1

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.

We’re ready, Red Eddie: the Lawful Industrial Action Bill

Posted on by
2

To be updated:

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.

Here’s Crow on life in that labyrinth:

The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act already says that accidental errors made by unions ‘on a scale unlikely to affect the result of a ballot’ should be disregarded.

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:

The bill will be read this Friday.

My average life as an average whore

Posted on by
8

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 →

Videos from Barnet anti-cuts meeting last night

Posted on by
2

These are video cuts from last night’s public meeting in Barnet.

There was an impressive turnout. Most people said they were Barnet residents (there was a show of hands towards the end).

Haven’t edited the vids, so there are rough moments.

First video: Shirley Franklin, Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition.

Talks about government attempts to close accident and emergency departments in London hospitals.

Nick Grant from the Anti Academies Alliance (not Alasdair Smith! – he went to another one. h/t vickram7).

Speaks about BBC giving in too easily to spending cuts rhetoric and the ‘class war’ in education. Says academies are about decentralising schools management. ‘The government has lied on its website,’ and deliberately overstated finance available to schools.

Next: John Lister from London Health Emergency.

Talks about hospitals that have lost their accident and emergency departments since the election – Queen Mary’s in Sidcup, Chase Farm, etc.

Continue reading →