I was one of those very disappointed by Gordon Brown’s sudden withdrawal of the Home Computing Initiative (a salary sacrifice tax incentive on internet kit and connections) in 2006. The scheme was a great example of a partnership between government, industry and unions to tackle a problem that rightly concerned them all – IT skills, …
Jason over at the newly rejuvenated Communicate or Die has been coming up with some great posts of late – recommended reading even for us on the wrong side of the pond. I liked his distinction today between rough democracy and formal democracy, in trying to explain why unions are hesitant about going ‘open source’ …
LabourStart’s photo group on flickr is a great resource for unions and activists looking to illustrate internationally focused communications work. It’s a group of more than 3,000 mostly Creative Commons licensed photographs of unions at work (mostly marching to and fro with flags to be honest, but that gets better pics than branch meetings I …
No – not a reference to the way our current ‘extended lunchbreak of discontent’ levels of strike action are being touted in our cliché-befuddled national press, but I’m making a rare trip out West to see James Graham’s new play ‘Sons of York‘, a family drama illustrating the period of profound national change at the …
Iain Dale made a flying visit to Congress today – He doesn’t seem to have been impressed enough to hang around with us. Iain may lack Richard Balfe’s staying power (he’s been lurking in the corridors outside the hall for days now) but it looks like did shift a few copies of his Total Politics …
At Congress 2008 in Brighton, which is turning out as interesting as ever – spending a week in the company of pretty much every element of the UK labour movement. I spoke at a fringe today on online organising, along with Eric Lee and APT’s Paul Smith. For the 99.995% of trade unionists who didn’t …
Politics and new-media goodie-bag blog Dadblog is sadly shutting up shop, but luckily only to move a few doors down the road to “I’ve Said Too Much“, where lloydshep opens up again with an interesting take on how the internet both helps and hinders campaigning.
The labour movement in Zimbabwe is being kept silent for yet another critical month, as Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) leaders Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo turned up in court to face charges of “speading falsehoods prejudicial to the state”, only to find the prosecutor had again not turned up for the trial. The …
…is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear. Or so ran the strapline at veteran British political blog Harry’s Place until yesterday, when their DNS host locked them out in response to a complaint on behalf of Sheffield academic and UCU activist, Jenna Delich. Delich had been the target of a …
As Zimbabwe prepares to put its union leadership on trial for criticising the government’s violent excesses, a similar story is unfolding in neighbouring Swaziland. Jan Sithole, Secretary General of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), was arrested on Friday, after 30 armed police stormed his house in the early hours of the morning.