Glasgow 2018 - Irony Is Not Dead
As regular readers know, I've had plenty to say down the years about the appalling role played by previous Labour run councils in Glasgow over equal pay.
But next week the current SNP led council is going to the Glasgow Employment Tribunal to defend the WPBR pay scheme and its notorious 37 hour rule which were introduced by a Labour council in January 2007.
As regular readers know, the WPBR was unanimously condemned as 'unfit for purpose' (in August 2017) by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, and the City Council was also denied (again unanimously) a separate request to appeal this landmark ruling to the UK Supreme Court in London.
So the upshot is that an SNP led council is going in to bat for a discredited pay scheme brought in by a previous Labour administration, even though the political leadership of the SNP are on record as 'completely accepting' that the WPBR scheme is discriminatory.
To add insult to injury, the same senior council officials who had been defending the WPBR for so many years were then handed responsibility for 'leading' sham settlement negotiations which, to no one's surprise, have since broken down.
Which all just goes to show that in Glasgow in 2018 - irony is not dead.
Official Advice (15/09/18)
I was involved in a discussion on Twitter the other day (about the fight for equal pay) and one of the people involved reproached me for criticising senior council officials whose professional advice has helped land Glasgow in the appalling mess the city finds itself in today.
Which reminded me of this wonderful scene from the BBC's 'Yes, Prime Minister'.
Irony Is Not Dead (02/09/18)
Jeremy Corbyn alleging that certain Jewish people cannot understand English irony is given short shrift by the creator of Yes Minister.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/so-jeremy-corbyn-thinks-i-don-t-get-irony-says-yes-minister-s-jewish-creator-jonathan-lynn-hh327qwq5
So Jeremy Corbyn thinks I don’t get irony, says Yes Minister’s Jewish creator
Esther Webber
The Times
Jonathan Lynn evoked Sir Humphrey, centre, in his rebuke of Labour’s leaderBBC
Jeremy Corbyn’s controversial claim that Zionists “don’t understand English irony” despite “having lived in the country a very long time” has been given a withering assessment by the creator of Yes Minister.
Jonathan Lynn said that the most appropriate response to the Labour leader’s denials of antisemitism came from Sir Humphrey Appleby, the programme’s fictional Whitehall mandarin, who said: “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.”
In a letter to The Times, Lynn said: “I am Jewish. Although I wrote Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, Corbyn says I don’t understand English irony. My co-writer Tony Jay was only half-Jewish, so perhaps he half-understood irony and was able to supply some.
“The Labour Party continues to deny that Corbyn is an antisemite but as Sir Humphrey said, ‘Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.’”
He added that Mr Corbyn’s speech “ironically, reveals what seems hidden to him”.
Lynn and Sir Antony Jay created the hapless Jim Hacker, a minister at the mercy of his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey. The series set in Whitehall and Downing Street aired on BBC Two throughout the 1980s and won multiple Best Comedy Baftas.
Lynn, 75, has also directed several films including Clue and My Cousin Vinny, for which Marisa Tomei won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Mr Corbyn defended himself in a statement last week, saying that he had used the term Zionist “in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people”.
He added: “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews.” He went on to say that he had “defended the Palestinian ambassador in the face of what I thought were deliberate misrepresentations by people for whom English was a first language, when it isn’t for the ambassador”.
The comments, made at a meeting convened by the Palestinian Return Centre in 2013, were condemned by Labour MPs including Luciana Berger and Wes Streeting and compared by Lord Sacks, the former chief rabbi, to Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.
Jeremy Corbyn’s controversial claim that Zionists “don’t understand English irony” despite “having lived in the country a very long time” has been given a withering assessment by the creator of Yes Minister.
Jonathan Lynn said that the most appropriate response to the Labour leader’s denials of antisemitism came from Sir Humphrey Appleby, the programme’s fictional Whitehall mandarin, who said: “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.”
In a letter to The Times, Lynn said: “I am Jewish. Although I wrote Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, Corbyn says I don’t understand English irony. My co-writer Tony Jay was only half-Jewish, so perhaps he half-understood irony and was able to supply some.
“The Labour Party continues to deny that Corbyn is an antisemite but as Sir Humphrey said, ‘Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.’”
He added that Mr Corbyn’s speech “ironically, reveals what seems hidden to him”.
Lynn and Sir Antony Jay created the hapless Jim Hacker, a minister at the mercy of his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey. The series set in Whitehall and Downing Street aired on BBC Two throughout the 1980s and won multiple Best Comedy Baftas.
Lynn, 75, has also directed several films including Clue and My Cousin Vinny, for which Marisa Tomei won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Mr Corbyn defended himself in a statement last week, saying that he had used the term Zionist “in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people”.
He added: “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews.” He went on to say that he had “defended the Palestinian ambassador in the face of what I thought were deliberate misrepresentations by people for whom English was a first language, when it isn’t for the ambassador”.
The comments, made at a meeting convened by the Palestinian Return Centre in 2013, were condemned by Labour MPs including Luciana Berger and Wes Streeting and compared by Lord Sacks, the former chief rabbi, to Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.
