While younger, the Labour Party used a symbol of a pen & shovel and the torch of liberty, that when stylised became known as the knife, the fork and spoon. You can work it out.
And since I am doing this, Clause IV group of Labour students used the PSOE’s Rose & Fist, which became more widely adopted including by IUSY. It was also adopted by the UK’s Labour and pro-EEC campaigners much to the probable chagrin of the Clause IV leadership who were mostly campaigners for leaving the EEC.
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A comrade writes,
I think the demand to raise SSP is very weak. the only way of maximising the chance workers will selfisolate when they have signs of Coronavirus infection is to ensure they can take leave on full pay. the demand for all outsourced NHS workers to get full pay if they need to selfisolate (contained in this letter) was implemented by NHS bosses in early march and has existed for substantive staff before then so that bit doesn’t make sense. agency workers in nhs still dont get full pay to selfisolate which is a problem and there is an issue of whether outsourced workers know about this provision. but the big problem on sick pay is in the care sector where almost half a million care workers have no occupational sick pay and are working with people most likely to die if they get the virus. It’s also a big problem in supermarkets, logistics and delivery sectors and manufacturing, including food manufacturing. the government is very vulnerable on this issue but labour and the unions (apart from a few exceptions pcs, rmt, unison north west region) are very weak. more on this here: www.safeandequal.org
I am of the view that SSP must become a state benefit (and increased) but the writing above addresses the short term issues about UK public health and the adverse impact that low wages has on the decisions to self-isolate and co-operate with the lockdown. ( The quote refers to a letter that I do not have.) …
There’s redundancies coming! I wrote a short piece on our Union branch web site, emphasising the need for speed; the consultation period is only 45 days now. I briefly touch on the issue of economic viability; for redundancies to be legal and fair, the work must have gone or about to go. It will be harder to argue that jobs under threat are viable while CV19 is looking over the economy like a black rain cloud. I also discuss the need for transparency and fairness in selecting people for redundancy in cases where judgement is required. (Some business units may be reducing in size and so there remains the opportunity stay in employment for some, in these cases the decision must be fair, impersonal and transparent. …
It would be odd not to comment on the CV19 pandemic. For various reasons I have been looking back at my blog and remember at one stage it was a semi-public diary. Because it’s my blog, this is quite abstract and very political, I hope that my readers are keeping safe with their families. This article looks at the diseases virulence and also the need for effective non-pharmaceutical interventions, especially the funding of sick pay and funding for isolation. There is [much] more below/overleaf. … …
I have been meaning to write an “employee self defence” manual for a while now, and something came across my desk today to remind me of this ambition. Here’s mine off the top of my head.
That’s it for the moment but I know there’s more. …
The Labour NEC by-election results have been announced, the Labour First slate have won, partly because the Left were split between Momentum and CLPD. Here's Sienna Miller, "Corbynsceptics sweep the board in Labour’s ruling body by-elections" at Labour List, and here's a .pdf mirror of Labour's announcement page.
Sky News and Rowena Mason, in the Guardian, have both run stories about a Labour Party document “The work of the Labour Party’s Governance & Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism 2014-2019”. This would seem to catalogue a conspiracy to subvert the party’s disciplinary process and even the 2017 election campaign to the detriment of the elected party leadership and the aspirations of its membership. There’s probably a lot to say, which I will wait to say, but I prepared this rule change last year as I had observed massive factional manipulation throughout the Labour Party and while this wouldn’t stop it, it would give the membership another avenue to hold Labour’s staff accountable to the values of the party. The document shows it’s needed at the highest levels; it’s a shame that no-one is thinking of those whose lives have been marred by the casual bullying covered up by more junior staff. I think the supporting statement needs to be strengthened. If the CLPD can get it’s act together I’ll ask them to support it, but you don’t need their permission.
The Labour Party Rule Book 2019 Chapter 2 Membership rules, Clause II Charter of Members Rights, Section 7 (pg 14) reads as follows:
‘Members have the right to dignity and respect, and to be treated fairly by the Labour Party. Party officers at every level shall exercise their powers in good faith and use their best endeavours to ensure procedural fairness for members.’
After Party officers, insert ‘, staff and volunteer role holders’
After ‘good faith’, insert ‘in accordance with the Nolan Principles of conduct in public life’
Replace ‘endeavours’ with ‘efforts’.
All Party Officers, staff and volunteer role holders are to be held to the Nolan Principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty & leadership.
ooOOOoo
Image Credit: Comes from a telegraph article on McNicol’s ‘moving on from the position of GS of the Labour Party. (I would link to it if WordPress allowed featured images to be linked, I have cropped it fit into the blog, i.e. I have not made this image available.) …
I have made some slight amendments to this site. I installed a redirect, https://davelevy.info/youtube, now resolves as my youtube channel, I have added the youtube channel to the links at the bottom of the page and I have amended the slider so that it exposes links to the work page, the wiki, the politics category (was the whole blog), the thoughts category and the technology category articles in the blog. …
I have just posted a blog on linkedin about business and IT strategy. I say a bit more here! This was provoked because I was doing some research for a job application which involves IT strategy. I was considering the alignment of business strategy with that of the IT department and what I might say. I outlined three models, although they were all developed a while ago, I think they all have relevance today. The three models address business strategy, software portfolio management and architectural pattern selection. Business strategy should drive portfolio and project management choices. While business strategy will outline how to do what must be done, it also defines what will not be done. Portfolio management determines the allocation of development funding, priority, maintenance funding, project risk appetite, people skills, project governance and software sourcing policy and as result of choices made, one can select the appropriate platform super architectures, of which you may need more than one. I conclude that theory matters. See more below/overleaf … …
One of the allegedly glaringly popular promises in the last Labour manifesto was the promise of free broadband. I wrote about it a couple of times and decided that though it was desirable, the failure to socialise it both within the movement and society as a whole allowed the promise to be undermined by questions of cost. I concluded the article above by asking “why not free water?”. One of the answers to that is that much government business, which it requires those most likely to not have the internet requires its use, on the one hand, recording business activity and on the other claiming benefits and maybe equally importantly writing to one’s MP or Council. The idea came from two sources, one of them the London CWU who issued a pamphlet, calling for broader public ownership of the telco and postal services on the grounds that private/market ownership was wasteful of wealth and resources, has delayed the adoption of superfast broadband, caused an investment famine and led to a pursuit of short term fashion & profit rather than investing in infrastructure for long term aggregate growth. The Executive Summary is reproduced below/overleaf. … …