Yes indeed, in this week’s top ‘believe it or not’ story (here on Al Jazeera), capitalist running pig-dog lackeys Wal-Mart are now trading in China. Apparently it’s going well, and they’ve even celebrated by setting up their own branch of the Communist Party for staff. Yes, you read that right – Wal-Mart are digging into …
Very interesting piece by Jonathan Guthrie in the FT (read it before they slap the curse of subscription view on it), “Unions need to swap the red flag for pastel shades”. He’s drawing together the T&G/Amicus merger with a new paper on unions’ finanical outlook from LSE/PSI (with the snappy title of “Accounting for Collective …
I like shopping at the Co-Op as a rule – it still has that feelgood connection to the labour movement that you don’t quite get with ASDA-WalMart. However, funny things seem to be afoot at the company, whose funerals wing has taken the monumental step of de-recognising the GMB, and ending a relationship over 100 …
Tagged by Tygerland to write about “10 things that I’d never do”. This is harder than it at first seems. F’rinstance, there are all manner of categories which you have to decide to rule in or out. First off, there are the kind of principled delusions of grandeur which aren’t ever likely to happen and …
A rather cramped demo this morning in front of Australia House in London. Roadworks all round the building meant most people having to squash into a rather narrow corridor of construction fences, and not actually coming into contact with that many passers-by. Still, everyone stayed cheerful, and rattled their protest boomerangs. Paul in the piccy …
Luckily as an avowed sports hater, I’m immune to the current wave of cricket-inspired Aussiephobia, and can show a bit of solidarity with their unions and working people. It’s a year to the day on Thursday since John Howard’s government introduced sweeping new labour laws, which were a body-blow to people trying to organise and …
Thanks to Martin at Blogging4Merton for a bit of nostalgia whilst reading Bloggers4Labour on my commute in to work*. Where were you on 22 November 1990, when Maggie announced her resignation? I was at 6th form college, in my A level politics class, when we heard cheering coming through the wall from the class next …
Here’s a story from last week (have been PC-free this last weekend). John Monks, General Secretary of the ETUC (and former GS of the TUC) was in town to give the annual Bevan Lecture, entitled “The Challenge of the New Capitalism”. His speech is online and is well worth a read (as is Stefan Stern’s …
This post from Tom Watson scared me not inconsiderably! A creationist lobby group sending DVDs to MPs, purporting to offer evidence why creationism should make it into the GCSE biology syllabus. Made me wonder after reading Mr Tony’s recent New Scientist Interview: NS: One subject that is of great concern to scientists is creationism. There …
A very apt book to kick off the tigmoo bookclub, this is at once a very illuminating peek into the world of working for a dotcom, and a hilarious satire. Stand-up comedian and story-teller Mike Daisey spent three years (21 dog years) working at Amazon in the US during the early days, and wrote up …