Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

Here's a lovely email from a regular reader in North Lanarkshire who'd like to know how she can help get justice for GMB members over their outstanding equal pay claims. Now I'll give some thought to that, but isn't it heartening to see people expressing solidarity with their fellow workers. Hi Mark, I've been reading ur website blog since day 1 and think ur amazing. If it hadnt been for u n A4ES, hundreds if not thousands of HSWs in North Lanarkshire would never have known about equal pay claims far less been paid out. And that includes Unison members and Unite members and for that I will be eternally grateful I'm not in any union as unison has sold me and my colleagues down the river too many times for my liking. Which is why I'm glad there are still people like urself with real values and morals and r willing to stand up for joe bloggs. I would really like to know if there's any way I can help my friends and colleagu...

The latest staged murders by the Islamic State speaks volumes about the shallow nature of 'political Islam' because the response from Muslim countries around the world has been muted; the absence of any public protest is very noticeable as is the sound of silence from influential governments, for example Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Yet a young American was savagely killed along with 18 captured Syrian soldiers, fellow Muslims, who were ritually and cruelly beheaded despite being prisoners of war. Now compare this evident lack of outrage within political Islam to the huge protests against a publicity seeking Pastor in America who was threatening to burn copies of the Koran, a stupid but essentially harmless act; or the publication of some cartoons in a Danish magazine depicting the Prophet Muhammad.    The BBC reports on the life and times of Peter (Abdul-Rahman) Kassig who, unlike previous kidnap victims, was not murdered live on air along with the Syrian s...

I watched the press conference given by CAGE yesterday, a self-styled advocacy organisation which has had a long association with Mohammed Emwazi who has been unmasked as 'Jihadi John', a sadist and murderer.  The chap at CAGE doing most of the talking was Asim Qureshi who appears on its web site as the group's Research Director, but for the most part he was really just a terrible apologist for Emwazi, arguing that the UK's security services had helped to radicalise this young man. Which is an old story, of course, the same one used by the murderers of Drummer Lee Rigby who argued 'offences against Islam' drove them to kill and butcher an off-duty young solider who was walking in a London street.         So CAGE is to be believed the alleged 'harassment' and interference by security services is to blame for Emwazi's actions rather than the young man himself or the choices he made by joining up with the detestable death cult of IS ...

The gang of Muslim men who attacked and beat to death a young Afghan woman in the name of their religion made a big mistake apparently. Not that this will come as any consolation to the victim, Farkhunda, to her family after an Islamic cleric urged the angry mob to mete out this terrible form of religious 'justice' over a false allegation that Farkhundha had set fire to the Koran. Now if I were a religious person, I would be asking myself how an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing God managed to get things so terribly wrong, not least because an innocent young woman has paid with her life.     Kabul mob attack: Women help bury 'wrongly accused' Farkhunda Women's rights and civil society activists helped bury Farkhunda at the funeral in Kabul The coffin of a woman, killed by a mob in Kabul on an apparently false charge, has been carried by women, marking a break with Afghan funeral customs. Hundreds of people attended a funeral for the wo...

Here's a post from the blog site archive which highlights the long fight for equal pay in South Lanarkshire and the ultimately futile attempts of the Council to keep secret the big pay differences between male and female jobs. As I said in my letter to local MSPs the Council's behaviour was similar to that of the last Labour Government which fought tooth and nail to prevent the public from understanding the true scale and extent of the great MPs' expenses scandal at Westminster. How strange it is that the leader of the House of Commons at the time, Labour's Harriet Harman, and the Glasgow MP Michael Martin tried everything to undermine their own government's FOI legislation which was designed to hold big bureaucracies to account.   Yet Labour-run South Lanarkshire followed this lead for another three years until the UK Supreme Court intervened and forced the Council to come clean about its pay arrangements three years later in 2013. Now won...

The Times published this trenchant critique of Alexis Tsipras and his colleagues in Syriza who seem to believe that the Greeks voting for other people to clear up their debts has some connection with fairness and democracy.    Which is nonsense, of course, just as it would make no difference to the Greek economy if a referendum were held on the proposition that Elvis is still alive or that the moon is made of green cheese. Tsipras and his naive cronies have no one to blame but themselves By  Ian King  - The Times Alexis Tsipras’s call for a referendum is an act of supreme cowardice - Nicolas Koutsokostas / Demotix Images The key exchange in the Greek crisis came when Yanis Varoufakis, the country’s narcissistic finance minister, told his fellow eurozone finance ministers that they had to accede to his government’s demands because they were those of a democratically elected administration. It is a pity that Mr Varoufakis — who, it is obligatory to note a...

The Sunday Times puts its finger on the nonsense that underpins the ongoing saga of Greek's finances:  'Why should the rest of Europe subsidise the lifestyle of people in Greece who are still doing bloody well?', to paraphrase the words of the Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president. Why indeed, as I've said myself on the blog site recently. Because how can it make sense for the Syria-led Greek government to abolish taxes on second and third homes in Greece only to demand, often in petulant fashion, for their European neighbours to rescue the Greek economy? Berlin’s final warning to Greeks By Bojan Pancevski and Tim Shipman - The Sunday Times Greek protesters march against austerity measures demanded by the EU (Panayiotis Tzamaros/Demotix) GERMAN officials have issued a dramatic warning to the Greeks, telling them they will have to leave the eurozone if they fail to do a deal with their creditors. It followed an equally blunt warning to Athens by ...

I enjoyed this report from the BBC which reports that the Syriza-led Government in Greece will not be calling further elections anytime soon. Because what would be the point of an election or a referendum if the question being asked is effectively:  "Do you want your neighbours to pay off your debts and subsidise public spending because successive governments can't be 'arsed' raising enough in taxes from Greek citizens?" So it just goes to show that while elections and referendums are part of the democratic process, they don't of themselves solve anything if the 'winners' behave in a completely unreasonable fashion. Now I live in an apartment building and if one of my neighbours held a vote and decided to exempt themselves from having to pay their communal maintenance charges in the expectation that the rest of us would pick up the slack, then I would definitely have something to say. And if the Greeks were to vote on the proposition that the m...

The Independent carried an interesting article on Syriza the other day in which Sean O'Grady made a very sensible point - if Greek debts were to be written off, the whole sorry saga would be bound to start all over again.  Syriza has come to power by promising to 'spend, spend, spend' other people's money and to squeeze the rich in Greece until the pips squeak. Good luck to them, I say, but what's that got to do with the rest of us? Far from raising taxes across the board to pay for essential public services, Syriza has promised to abolish a new property tax on second homes which was introduced for the first time in 2011. So relatively well-off, middle-class Greeks will now get off Scot-free while Syriza goes cap in hand to the European Union asking for the country's debts to be written off.   Which is as daft as it sounds.   9 reasons Greece's experiment with the radical left is doomed to failure Beware Greeks bearing debts By  SEAN O'GRA...

GMB members in North Lanarkshire must be hopping mad at the importance union leaders attach to the Labour Party and its various leadership contests - compared to, say, their efforts in relation to equal pay.  Here's a message from 'Sir' Paul Kenny, the GMB's UK leader, encouraging union members to vote in the forthcoming leadership elections and I imagine the other unions have gone to similar lengths. I can't see the sense in this I have to say, not least because the unions' intervention last time around saddled Labour with Ed Miliband as party leader and that didn't work out too well. Far better to let individual Labour members decide who they want as leader and for the unions to concentrate on the bread and butter issues of real importance to their members such as the fight for equal pay. From:  Kenny, Paul Sent:  29 May 2015  Subject:  FWD: Important: your right Dear Harry, In the coming weeks and months there will be a debate about the ...

Trade union members in Scotland will be interested to know that while the fight for equal pay has been in full flow, union bosses have been wasting a small fortune in trying to sell Ed Miliband to the nation.   In the run up to the recent Westminster election Labour's top three donations were: £3.5 million from Unite £697,000 from the GMB  £572,000 from Unison Members' money down the drain if you ask me.

Adam Boulton writing in The Sunday Times highlights the great efforts trade unions have made to sign up members to vote in the Labour Party leadership contest. Now just compare that with the completely paltry efforts of the big Labour-supporting unions over equal pay: with members being kept in the dark for years over the huge pay differences between male and female council jobs.     Says all you need to know about the priorities of Britain's union bosses (the Bubs) including 'Sir' Paul Kenny who says he would give up his knighthood in return for better rights for low-paid workers.   Three Labour races and each one a gift for the tee-heeing Tories   By Adam Boulton - The Sunday Times Like a naughty schoolboy of yesteryear, David Cameron is still sticking his tongue out behind teacher’s back after his slap for gloating issued by Harriet Harman, Labour’s schoolmarmish caretaker leader. Prime ministerial bumptiousness is almost inevitable. The Labour party...