Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

The trade unions in North Lanarkshire have finally broken their silence over the Council's late-running job evaluation (JE) review with this statement from Unison (complete with spelling mistake) which was sent to me by a kind reader. JOB RE-EVALATION (sic) PROJECT UPDATE The process of re-evaluating the posts involved in the equal pay litigation is almost complete. There are a small number of outstanding issues that the job evaluation team will be able to conclude in the next few days. The new job overviews will then be passed to the project board which is made up equally of management and trade union representatives. The project board is then responsible for implementing any changes that arise from the new evaluations. UNISON are pushing for the process to be concluded without further delay and we'll update members when we can. Now anyone  can make  a silly spelling mistake, but what I find very odd is that the union has nothing to say about senior Home Care managers...

A reader from has sent me an email she received from John Mason regarding the ongoing fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council - John is contesting the seat of Glasgow Shettleston in the Scottish Parliament elections which take place next Thursday. Now I've written to John myself on the subject and I was rather taken aback at his response which I would characterise as being more concerned about the impact on the Council which created this situation the first place, of course. The fact is that the lowest paid women workers in Glasgow were unfairly treated for years, being paid typically £6.00 an hour while comparable male jobs were earning £9.00 or more for every hour they worked.  When Action 4 Equality Scotland came along in 2005 and highlighted the huge differences in pay between male and female dominated jobs, the Council (having previously denied any equal pay problem) rapidly rushed out settlement offers which were worth much less (less than half...

I listened to Ken Livingstone on the radio earlier today trying desperately to 'defend the indefensible' in terms of his comments about Hitler and Zionism. As often happens on these occasions, 'attack' seems to be the preferred form of defence and instead of apologising for being such a dick, Ken sought to deflect attention away from his foolish words by blaming the whole business as a storm in a teacup whipped up by MPs who are hostile to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Now that takes a great deal of 'chutzpah' - a brass neck, as people are fond of saying in Glasgow - but I encountered a similarly dumb argument on Twitter the other day with a chap who couldn't tell me whether he thought that Jon Lansman (the Chair of the pro-Corbyn Labour group Momentum) is an arch-Blairite - see Twitter exchange below. So while Ken and his chums continue to grasp at any passing straw, the biggest irony of all is that Ken Livingstone set out to defend the Labour MP ...