RLB at the Rivoli

I went to Rebecca Long-Bailey’s meeting in Brockley, earlier tonight. I made some notes which I have polished and reproduced here. Her speaking style is not that of Ian Hodson, nor of Matt Wrack who was her warm up act as were two local Momentum supporting councillors. Maybe we’ve had enough of ranty demagogues and interestingly even when I drifted off, she regained my attention; much of her content is good. Her words were reported elsewhere but this is based on the notes I took and two videos taken by a friend and posted on my Youtube channel.

 

She spoke of groups, unity and competence. She spoke about winning those who are “just managing”, educational access and with some new ideas on constitutional reform inc. solid promises on devolution. She also spoke about a her views on a member led party and I conclude by looking at the theory that she is setting up some of her supporters and maybe even Unite for a reality check. I conclude the blog by looking at two of the questions asked, one on state racism and the other on the promise for a second referendum. For more, see overleaf/below. … …

On Open Selection

This is my experience of the reformed trigger ballots, others will have different ones.

The new rules did not make much difference. Only one MP failed to obtain renomination after losing a trigger ballot, although five lost their ballots. Some may have been saved by running out of time and or a lot of people stood down. However we i.e. the Left are losing because people aren’t turning up, and they aren’t turning up because we don’t know who they are and many of them have given up on us as leaders of the Corbyn project. People have not engaged in this process and it is not because of the fact they didn’t get a phone call or email. (There may be one or two places where piss poor organisation by the left had led to failure, and some where they ran out of time.) In some cases, the surviving MPs must be seen to genuinely have the support of the CLP membership.

We i.e. the Left have driven people away through our sectarian and indecent behaviour. We have failed to renew our leadership. The momentum database is now too inaccurate to be useful, inaccuracies which incl. CLP/Branch Membership facts.

Those that support the incumbents are often better Labour Campaigners then we are, (except for some of our Trotskyist friends) and many of our recent members and new members first experience of the Labour Party is on the doorstep.

While this is controversial people are leaving! (Or were until the election.)

We need to discover nice, we need to build ward socials, and meet more people. Supporting Corbyn isn’t enough because people can think they do that by supporting him in the coup and voting for the JC9. They don’t have to support us, and don’t in many cases because we don’t talk to them.

In addition, by driving for All Member Meeting governance, we have ignored Branch activity and let them fail.

We have been looking in the wrong place.

ooOOOoo

This was originally written on 16th October. …

Which Union

Which Union

A number of people are becoming active in politics and are asking which Union should they join because if a LP member, you must join a Union if eligible and must pay the political levy if the Union has a political fund. Anyway, if at work, it’s a good thing to do, for yourself and for others.

People join Unions because of where they work and who they work for; the principle is that as socialists and trade union militants, we should/must defend industrial unionism. In much of Europe, the Unions are even closer adjuncts of the political parties than in the UK and this is not a good thing.

I describe my rules and offer a web site URL below/overleaf. …

One Man Rule

While talking to a friend, about Lewisham Council’s Democracy Review, I came to the conclusion that while I have opposed Executive Mayors because I feel the Labour Party is incapable of holding them i.e. Labour Mayors to account to their manifesto promises, actually the Council can’t do that either; it doesn’t have the tools; Scrutiny can only delay a decision and every decision except planning and licensing is taken by the Mayor. 💩

I need to look into the law and see if this can be changed/improved within the context of a Mayoral system, but as you may know my preference is a return to committee led councils. …

Servants, not Masters

More from my head provoked by Alex Nunn’s book  “The Candidate”, I am reading the chapter on the media. Alex states that George Eaton wrote a negative piece in the Statesman on Corbyn, and ended up supporting Cooper; it reminded me of Jason Cowley’s article, “The fall of Labour’s golden generation”, available behind their identity/pay walls here, or as a .pdf, written a month or so later.

This, though is the quote that makes me remember the article, it’s anonymously second hand,

Parties in the end are machines for capturing power and there is a sort of life cycle, and you’ve got to be absolutely vigilant about renewing it. Blair and Brown thought they could renew the machine with very clever people, but with one or two exceptions they were – what is the word I’m searching for? – they were servants, they weren’t masters, they didn’t really have a vision of where they wanted to go.

 …

Thoughts on DaaS

I am still struggling to make a remote DaaS for my tablet.  I have built an amazon image based on Server 2012, which is getting a bit long in the tooth and Skype fails to boot on it, maybe I should ensure I have implemented an Amazon “Desktop” experience, but I am not happy with the price. I wondered if Azure might be cheaper, although on first look it would seem not. I need to be more sure and having a remote DaaS would be cool for the tablet, as bit by bit, services will deprecate the version frozen browser. I suppose that bit by bit RDP will also fail, but let’s see. (Microsoft’s desertion of ARM maybe it’s last act of monopoly actions and is a lesson to both consumers and OEMs of the problems in  not owning your own operating system, a subject I used to write a lot about.)

 …