Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I said in a recent post that I would be writing to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's new First Minister, regarding the behaviour of North Lanarkshire Council over equal pay. I did so on Friday by email and have set out a detailed argument inviting Scottish Ministers to intervene using their powers under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012. So watch this space for news because later this week as well I am due to receive a response from North Lanarkshire Council in relation to my recent FoI request which asked for further details of the Council's performance 'bonus scheme' for its most highly paid officials. NLC and Equal Pay (24 November 2014) I said in a recent post that I would be writing to Scotland's new First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to highlight the ridiculous behaviour of North Lanarkshire Council over equal pay. I plan to do so this week, but in the meantime here's a picture of Nicola Sturgeon with her ...

I've written a lot about North Lanarkshire in recent weeks, but here's a brief summary of where things stand as we approach the end of another year in the fight for equal pay. "Will we win?", people ask me on a regular basis. Yes, I'm absolutely convinced of that and the reason we will win is that the Council has taken a complete pasting at the ongoing Employment Tribunal which is due to recommence in Glasgow on 19 January 2015. What has happened is that the   Council's defence has been forensically taken apart by the barrister acting for Action 4 Equality Scotland's clients, Daphne Romney QC. Daphne has shown that the Council's claims to have delivered equal pay through it 2007 job evaluation scheme (JES) are complete baloney - from start to finish. As regular readers know, all that really happened is that the much higher earnings of traditional male jobs were preserved because regardless of their JES scorers, the male jobs were assimilated onto...

I've been in touch with a couple of MSPs in North Lanarkshire recently and one of the things I've been asked about is whether or not Action 4 Equality Scotland is still taken on new NLC cases. The answer to that question is a definite Yes because even new employees will have a claim, so long as North Lanarkshire's pay arrangements continue to favour traditional male jobs. So for as long as this situation continues NLC workers will continue to have a claim under equal pay legislation and Action 4 Equality Scotland has put on several hundred new clients in the past year, while the Council's case continues to collapse in the ongoing Employment Tribunal. A4ES represents the great majority of claimants in North Lanarkshire and while I am very confident that we will win the case against the Council, I suspect we will still be open for business for a little while yet.   

Here's a beautifully written, yet rather odd comment piece by Howard Jacobson in The Independent in which opines about his disappointment in various public figures for whom he once harboured great hopes.  I'm not sure fully agree with Howard on his assessment of Barack Obama because while the American President has shown a great reluctance to provide leadership on the world stage (after the long years of Afghanistan and Iraq) he has at least tackled the issue of affordable health care in the USA and, more recently, launched a bold initiative on immigration.  So for me, the jury on President Obama is still out.  Obama, Miliband and Bill Cosby: expect the worst from those who offer to be the best It's one dashed hope after another By HOWARD JACOBSON - The Independent Thought for the day: everyone disappoints you in the end. The only question is how quickly that end comes. I held out against Obama-fatigue for one whole term of his ...

The Guido Fawkes web site has an interesting take on the Emily Thornberry affair and provides the intriguing insight that Labour's former justice chief is actually known by another title, Lady Nugee. Now that comes as news to me and is disappointing, though not surprising, because there are plenty of people inside the Labour movement whose lives are strangely incomplete and unfulfilled until they receive the recognition of a bauble from Her Majesty the Queen.  My attitude to anyone who is desperate to be part of the UK's 'honours system' means that Emily and the Labour Party become ever more ridiculous, as the search for votes continues in the run up to the 2015 general election.  Guido Fawkes can be found at: www.http://order-order.com  The Tale of Lady Nugee’s Walled Garden in Islington Snobby sacked Labour MP Emily Thornberry’s official title is Lady Nugee, by virtue of her marriage to the High Court Judge Sir Christopher Nugee. Some years ago, with him,...

Glasgow Rangers fans must be tearing their hair out at the latest reports surrounding the arrest of five men including former owner, Craig Whyte, who are all suspected of fraudulent activity over the sale of the once mighty Ibrox club.  Now quite how the club could have been sold in such controversial circumstances is a mystery to me and no doubt many Rangers fans as well. Perhaps another case of due diligence light? Former Rangers owner Craig Whyte held at Heathrow Airport Mr Whyte is expected to appear at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Friday Former Rangers owner Craig Whyte has been arrested after arriving in the UK from Mexico where he had been detained. The 43-year-old was held at Heathrow Airport on Thursday and will be taken to Scotland for an expected appearance at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Friday. He is being held on an arrest warrant in relation to an investigation into his takeover of Rangers in 2011. Mr Whyte was detained in Mexico after being refused entry...

Gordon Brown is doing a political 'dance of the seven veils' in Glasgow later today, my home city, which has been completely dominated by the Labour Party for the past 50 years. Now Gordon's friends 'let it be known' last week that he wouldn't be standing for office again at the May 2015 general election, thank God, presumably because he's effectively operated as a part-time Westminster MP for years and has now finally accepted it's time to move on. But before taking his leave, Gordon is going to give it one more try to 're-set' Scottish politics by urging the country to accept that the Smith Commission has settled the argument about Devo Max and home rule and that everyone should now put aside their political differences to concentrate instead on tackling inequality. Well in case Gordon didn't know there's been a battle raging over equal pay in Glasgow   for the past 10 years and in neighbouring North Lanarkshire and South Lanarksh...

For the past 25 years Gordon Brown's writ has run ruthlessly throughout the Scottish Labour Party; few big decisions were ever made without Gordon's blessing including,  for example, the election of the l ast three Labour leaders in Scotland: Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray and Johann Lamont.   But things are about to change as Gordon gets ready to announce his departure from front line politics with Labour membership in Scotland dwindling down to 10,000 or less and the Party at its lowest ever standing in the opinion polls. Meanwhile popular support for the SNP (Labour's arch rivals) is now at all all-time high and under a new youthful leader, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has enjoyed an incredible surge from 20,000 to 90,000 individual members, despite ending up on the losing side of the Scottish independence referendum.  And such a ruinous end to a political career reminded me of this post from the blog site archive and while Gordon Brown is nothing li...

I may just have to eat my words about North Korea since this charming photo of its all powerful dictator Kim Jong-un seems to display a remarkably progressive policy on the equal opportunities recruitment of fighter pilots. Now I'm not too sure if the 'great leader' could squeeze himself into the cockpit of fighter plane in the background which his two female companions pilot, apparently, as part of North Korea's air defence system. In any event, with or without Kim Jong-un on board I'm not convinced the aircraft could get off the ground because it looks as if it's about sixty or more years old.

A regular reader from North Lanarkshire has been in touch with an 'off the wall' suggestion - why doesn't an Equal Pay candidate stand against one of the sitting North Lanarkshire Labour MPs in the May 2015 general election? Now this might not be as crazy as you first think because, as I wrote on the blog site recently, the SNP have agreed to support 'independent minded' candidates (who are not SNP members) in an effort to cut the Labour Party at Westminster down to size. Which sounds a great idea because Labour has an awful lot to answer for over equal pay and the best way to get the Party to take a long hard look at itself if you ask me, would be to sweep away all the political deadwood at Westminster. And a good place to start would be with the four North Lanarkshire Labour MPs who have stood on the sidelines while the fight for equal pay with Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council has been raging for the past 10 years. Now my contacts with the SNP are not gr...

To mark St Andrew's Day I thought I'd recall two of my favourite events from Scotland's independence referendum - Kevin Bridges' intervention on the thorny subject of a currency union and Glasgow's 'rickshaw guy' who managed to get right up the noses of the Labour Party establishment. Who said politics isn't fun? Glasgow Rickshaw Guy (17 September 2014) It must have seems like a good idea at the time, but this parade of Labour 'men in suits' came badly unstuck when some chap in a rickshaw followed them around the streets of Glasgow playing Darth Vader's favourite tune. As these tribunes from the once all powerful People's Party tried to make their way to an assembly point at the top of Buchanan Street. I was struck by the fact that no one seemed able or willing to engage with their 'tormentor' who suggested that they had all travelled north from Westminster using their generous MPs' expenses. For...

Gordon Brown is doing a political 'dance of the seven veils' in Glasgow later today, my home city, which has been completely dominated by the Labour Party for the past 50 years. Now Gordon's friends 'let it be known' last week that he wouldn't be standing for office again at the May 2015 general election, thank God, presumably because he's effectively operated as a part-time Westminster MP for years and has now finally accepted it's time to move on. But before taking his leave, Gordon is going to give it one more try to 're-set' Scottish politics by urging the country to accept that the Smith Commission has settled the argument about Devo Max and home rule and that everyone should now put aside their political differences to concentrate instead on tackling inequality. Well in case Gordon didn't know there's been a battle raging over equal pay in Glasgow   for the past 10 years and in neighbouring North Lanarkshire and South Lanark...

For the past 25 years Gordon Brown's writ has run ruthlessly throughout the Scottish Labour Party; few big decisions were ever made without Gordon's blessing including,  for example, the election of the l ast three Labour leaders in Scotland: Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray and Johann Lamont.   But things are about to change as Gordon gets ready to announce his departure from front line politics with Labour membership in Scotland dwindling down to 10,000 or less and the Party at its lowest ever standing in the opinion polls. Meanwhile popular support for the SNP (Labour's arch rivals) is now at all all-time high and under a new youthful leader, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has enjoyed an incredible surge from 20,000 to 90,000 individual members, despite ending up on the losing side of the Scottish independence referendum.  And such a ruinous end to a political career reminded me of this post from the blog site archive and while Gordon Brown is nothing like C...