Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

A bus in Denmark carries an important message for Americans living abroad - Dump Trump!   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-650-million-people-immigration Donald Trump says Clinton would let 650 million people into US in a week Republican presidential nominee makes outlandish immigration claim at a rally in New Mexico while also stoking fears of voting fraud in Colorado Trump: Clinton would let 650 million people into US in one week By  Ben Jacobs  - The Guardian Donald Trump falsely claimed at a rally on Sunday that Hillary Clinton wants to let “650 million people pour in” to the US and “triple the size of our country in one week”. Speaking in an airplane hangar in Albuquerque, New Mexico , Trump again pushed his hardline immigration stance and warned of the dangers posed by what he described as Clinton’s “open borders” policy. Trump took his alarmist rhetoric to a new height when boasting about his endorsement from ...

Paul Mason, a leading supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, was embarrassed the other day when his private thoughts about the appeal of the Labour leader were leaked to The Sun newspaper. “Corbyn doesn’t appeal to the mainstream working class vote. “It’s to do with a cultural thing about London. “Corbyn goes to England on a bike and cycles round. “Working class people go to a leader. “He has no cultural references to the way they live”. How refreshing to find that some of these 'lefty' commentators agree with me after all, even if they say one thing in public and another in private. Straight talking, honest politics?   Having A Laugh! The latest Labour Party poster made me laugh with its ridiculous image of Jeremy Corbyn 'calling time' on the equal pay waiting game. Maybe Jeremy could find the time to send this poster to some of the many Labour council who fought so hard against equal pay for all these years? South Lanarkshire and North Lanarkshir...

My colleague Stefan Cross QC drew my attention to this post on Twitter which reports on a trade union campaign in Durham in support of the county council's Classroom Assistants. As regular readers know, the local unions have not exactly shown the same fighting spirit over equal pay in North Lanarkshire and were not, for example, party to the long-running Employment Tribunal case involving Classroom Assistants, Clerical Assistants and Sheltered Housing Wardens. I wonder if any readers in North Lanarkshire have a view on what strikes me as a rather sorry state of affairs?       Stefan Cross QC Retweeted UNISON - the union  ‏ @ unisontweets     Oct 16 “Durham TAs - standing proud. #ValueUs ” @DurhamUNISON @TAs_Durham @l00py_lu @ta_hltaUK @Duncan_Rothwell North Lanarkshire Update (20/05/16) Here's another post on North Lanarkshire Council's job evaluation (JE) review which I wrote back in May 2015. As regu...

The Independent reports that a Trump supporter in Iowa has been charged with election fraud after casting two votes in the American presidential election.  Terri Rote tried to explain her behaviour away by claiming that "I don't know what came over me." Which is nonsense, of course, because what 'came over' Terri is that she's been listening to Donald Trump making wild and bogus claims that the election is rigged against the Republican candidate. In due course, an American court will throw out Terri Rote's risible claim that her first vote for Trump would somehow be counted as a vote for Hillary Clinton, whom she describes as "Satan" on Facebook by the way. Democracy has its work cut out in dealing with a dangerous demagogue like Donald Trump, but that's what's a stake in America's 2016 presidential election.         http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-supporter-charged-vote...