Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

A brief statement has been issued by Fox and Partners Solicitors on the discussions which have been taking place with South Lanarkshire Council in recent months over its outstanding equal pay claims - the content covers all clients of Action 4 Equality Scotland.   "As you know, we have now had several weeks of negotiations with the council’s representatives over your claims. Those negotiations have been constructive and progress is being made. We therefore feel that at this stage it would be in the best interests of our clients to seek a postponement of the EAT scheduled for 18-20 February so that negotiations can continue. We will continue to act in your best interests and will update you as soon as we can by the end of February." Further news will follow at the end of February, so for the moment there is no need to do anything - other than to sit tight.

I caught part of First Minister's Questions (FMQs) in the Scottish Parliament yesterday and was taken aback by the performance of the Labour leader, Johann Lamont. Now FMQs has developed into an unseemly affair in recent times with the Labour leader continually calling into question the First Minister's integrity by calling him dishonest, a stranger to the truth and completely detached from reality.   But Johann lost the plot altogether at yesterday's FMQs describing the potential new powers of an independent Scotland as "wee things".  Earlier in their exchanges the First Minister, Alex Salmond, had reeled out a long list of 'gains' from independence including:  control of: all taxes (e.g VAT, Corporation and Income Tax) control of North Sea oil revenues and renewable energy policy control over employment law and related issues such as the minimum wage control of welfare policy and controversial issues such as the 'bedroom tax' contro...

I just finished reading a book by Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, which is a fascinating work but hard going because it documents events surrounding the Spanish Civil War including the cold blooded murder of thousands of innocent civilians. Peter Preston is even-handed in his criticism of both Republicans and Nationalists, but he is unafraid to call a spade a spade and does so repeatedly, in a painstakingly researched book which concludes that the fascists were the main culprits in their campaign to overthrow the elected Republican Government. Here's a brief excerpt from the book which recounts the death of the famous Spanish Poet, Federico García Lorca (38), who was murdered o n August 18, 1936 along with a teacher  and two bullfighters . "When rightists hunting for 'reds' began to look for him, Lorca took refuge in the home of his friend the Falangist poet Luis Rosales. On 16 August, at the home of the Ros...

If I could, I would send this article from the Guardian to Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, because it illustrates what happens when a country allows prejudice to grow and turn into outright bigotry - in this against gays. President Putin says he has nothing against gay people, yet by his words and behaviour he  encourages the opposite by linking a homosexual lifestyle to the abuse of children.  The quality of the 'evidence' presented in the Sharia Court was laughable, according to the Guardian report, but the intolerance shown towards gay people more widely is the catalyst for violent vigilantes and lynch mobs.     'Nobody thinks I'd dare show my face here' – inside a Nigerian sharia court New legislation has increased homophobia – and in the state of Bauchi, led to a court being mobbed by anti-gay protesters By  Monica Mark in Bauchi A crowd gathers outside a sharia court in the northern Nigeria...

Godfrey Bloom, the madcap MEP (Member  of the European Parliament), may have been disowned by UKIP but he's back in the news again and, predictably, for all the wrong reasons.   Here's a YouTube clip of Godfrey trying to put down a student, David Browne, during and Oxford Union debate by comparing his physical appearance to that of King Richard III of England who was portrayed as a physically frail and wizened figure by none other than William Shakespeare, of course. But whatever Godfrey Bloom's reasons for 'playing the man rather than the ball' with his rude ad hominem interruption dressed up as a bogus point of order - the young man certainly wipes the floor with the former UKIP MEP by reminding him that people who resort to personal attacks do so, because they have lost the argument and have nothing better to say.   

Here's a report from the Herald newspaper on a 'debate' in the House of Lords which seems to have involved a series of Tory and Labour peers, plus the odd Liberal Democrat, agreeing with each other on the proposition that Scotland is bound to go to hell in a handcart - if the country votes for independence on 18 September 2014. To think that we are paying these 'noble' lords £300 a day (tax free) plus generous expenses to discuss such nonsense - is an insult to people's intelligence in these straitened economic times. Not only that they are all of former politicians who are all retired (some early) on gold plated MP pensions - yet they still get their noses in the public spending trough with their elevation to the other place, as it's known, in the Palace of Westminster. If you ask me, we should get rid of the House of Lords - a policy which the Labour Party supported for years - yet the placed is stuffed full of former Labour politicians...