Time to play hardball
No group of organised workers – especially one with a historic reputation for combativity – would tolerate having its wages slashed by 53%. But that’s the scale of the concessions Delphi, North America’s biggest car parts manufacturer, is seeking from the United Auto Workers, according to today’s Financial Times. The company wants to see average [...]
Dumping Dubya
What are the chances of seeing George W Bush impeached over Iraq next year? Not bad at all if the Democrats do well in the midterm congressional elections in November, according to an article currently on the website of neocon house journal The Weekly Standard. ‘The Impeach Bush movement has made great strides over the [...]
They’re not lovin’ it
The latest pearl of wisdom from a top management consultancy, courtesy of Michael Heseltine’s new magazine World Business: A quarter of workforce ‘disengaged’ Source: Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study Reviewed: 28-Mar-06 ‘In August 2005, Towers Perrin’s HR Services business consulted more than 85,000 employees working for large and mid-sized companies in 16 countries on four [...]
Politics and punk rock
It’s 30 years on since the first Sex Pistols gig, and the BBC website does a round-up of reminiscences from the period, include Jean-Jacques Burnel from the Stranglers, Pauline Murray from Penetration, that bloke from Tenpole Tudor and Eddie from the Vibrators. None of them uses a current photograph, I notice. Wonder why that could [...]
Poor little loves
Geoff Hoon has been complaining about what a hard time Britain’s politicians get from evil journalists: ‘There is not a media in the developed Western world that is as dismissive or as aggressive or as intrusive as ours.’ Translation: The bastards sometimes find out what we are up, and then have the temerity to report [...]
Tories off their tits
According to the BBC website, Labour MP Martin Salter – quite a nice bloke as I remember him, and always good for a quote – has claimed that a Chinese heroin baron funded the Tories in 1994. Hey, what’s the point in having parliamentary privilege if you don’t use it, right? The allegation seems to [...]
Angst over Accenture
One of the major companies closest of all to New Labour is Accenture, the US-based consultancy outfit. Its reputation is not of the highest, to put it politely. Accenture and its predecessor Arthur Andersen were involved in many of the worst business scandals in both Britain and America in recent decades, from De Lorean to [...]
The future of Labour
Readers in the London area will be able to hear me join a panel discussion on the future of the Labour Party on Resonance 104.4 FM at nine pm on Wednesday this week. Other guests include Lib-Dem blogger Nick Edwards and someone from the Institute of Public Policy Research. You can also listen to the [...]
Racism without adjectives
In 1999, the McPherson Inquiry found the Metropolitan Police to be ‘institutionally racist’ after its handling of the investigation into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Now the Independent Police Complaints Commission has accused four Humberside police officers of ‘unwitting racism’ after the death of former paratrooper Christopher Alder in Hull police station. There [...]
Kamm, Respect and fascism
There are many derogatory epithets that can reasonably be applied to the Socialist Workers’ Party and Respect. But ‘fascist’ isn’t one of them, despite the remarkably cheap argument advanced by the expensively-educated Oliver Kamm to this effect: ‘Look closely at the organisation, its methods and propaganda, and you find what is, alongside the British National [...]
