Paul Holmes Kirklees UNISON : George Square Huddersfield

Paul Holmes Unison Union - Unite the Resistance National Convention 19.1...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCTiut-0jEM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45WMCzhF6A4&feature=related

Lessons to be learnt

Quote from Jack Nicholson in the film about James Hoffa, Teamsters' union leader, when recruiting truck drivers "Never let a stranger into your heart, your home or your cab unless he is a friend of labour. But if he is that friend of labour - then he is the only friend you've got." There are a lot of people going to find out the truth of this statement over the next period.

Nothing happens accidentally, all the lessons that our forebearers learnt will have to be learnt again by this generation, including the incessant hatred that the Tories have for the trade unions and the working class.

The Tories, a bit like the newspapers, only speak admiringly of the trade unions 200 years ago or 2,000 miles away. It is a false admiration, because 200 years ago or 2,000 miles away the Tories still hated the unions. Why? Because the trade unions represent the defence of working class living standards. In the final analysis the unions are the only things that stand between working people and destitution.

Never forget - it is not leaders who make movements, it's movements who make leaders. It is a leader's job to inspire workers about what is achievable. Union members want leaders who care more about their members' interests than their own bank accounts.

It's time for everyone to read (or re-read) the Raggy Trousered Philanthropists, learn the words to the Red Flag and remember who the enemy are.

A matter of class

In 1990, 1% of recording artists in the British Top 10 went to public school. In 2010, 60% of recording artists in the Top 10 went to public school. (7% of Britain's schoolchildren go to public school).

The Big Society!

Question

Who's the odd one out?
a) Henry Kissinger
b) Arnold Schwarzenegger
c) Boris Johnson
d) Leonard Cohen
e) Joni Mitchell
f) Neil Young





Answer

Boris Johnson - he is the only one who could stand for election as President of the USA. He was born there - all the others were born outside of the the USA. Johnson left the USA when he was 5.

Telling the truth?

A member of the Co-alition Cabinet has met an executive from Mr Murdoch's News International empire, on average, once every three days since the Co-alition Government was formed 14 months ago. 20 Cabinet Ministers have met Murdoch executives 130 times in the last 14 months!

David Cameron, Prime Minister, was at at least 32 of the meetings, George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was at 17, and Liam Fox, Defence Secretary, was at 17.

Mr Osborne's meetings included a dinner in New York with Mr Murdoch on 17th December 2010 - two weeks before the media's regulator was due to rule on Mr Murdoch's bid for full ownership of BSkyB. Mr Osborne seems very friendly with the Murdoch family. Besides the dinner in New York, he met Murdoch again in May 2011 and met Murdoch's son, James (Chair of News International) and Rebekah Brooks (News International's former Chief Executive) on three other occasions. Mr Osborne also met Mr Murdoch's daughter, Elizabeth, at a social gathering in June 2011.

The first media meetings by Jeremy Hunt (Culture Secretary) and Michael Gove (Education Secretary), after their appointment to the Cabinet in 2010, were also with Rupert Murdoch (were they reporting in?).

Murdoch Executives also met 4 times with Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister) and twice with Vince Cable (Business Secretary).

In all, Michael Gove (Education Secretary) has met Rupert Murdoch 7 times on the last 14 months and he has met Rebekah Brooks 8 times. Mr Gove met with Rupert Murdoch twice in June 2011.

"How is the Government run? Governments tell lies to journalists and then Ministers believe what they read" - Karl Kraus (1909).

PS Andy Coulson worked for David Cameron as Director of Communications until he resigned. He was arrested in July 2011. He had left News International in 2007 but is believed to have had "work benefits", such as private healthcare and company car, paid for for three years after he left the firm. He has also had his legally fees, to date, paid by News International. These are believed to have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Tory Party officials were giving categorical assurances, until recently, that Mr Coulson's only form of income was from the Tory Party during the years he worked for it.

It is unusual for a second paymaster, i.e. the Tory Party, not to know about the first paymaster because of tax considerations. Tom Watson, Labour MP, has written to the Electoral Commission enquiring about possible breaches of party 'sponsorship' rules.

'Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice'.

Just an Ordinary Bloke!

When David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 he claimed he wanted to make Britain "One Nation" and even talked about decreasing the gap between rich and poor. Well, the gap between the rich and poor in 2011 is greater than at any time since the 1930's. So what is Mr Cameron's background? (Don't forget Mr Cameron's claims "what matters most to a child's life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting").

Background
His father and grandfather were both millionaire stockbrokers (his grandmother was a millionaire Polish banker). He is descended from King William IV.

School
As a boy he attended Heatherdown Preparatory School in Berkshire (which counts Prince Andrew and Prince Edward among its former pupils).

At 11 years old he travelled to the USA by Concord with four classmates to celebrate the birthday of a classmate, Peter Getty, the grandson of American oil billionaire John Paul Getty. A former tutor of Mr Cameron, Mr R Llewellyn, recalls that Cameron and his friends tucked into caviar, salmon and beef bordelaise. Cameron (age 11) cheerfully raised a glass of Dom Perignon '69, toasting 'Good health, sir'.

At 13 he went to Eton. (There are 28,000 schools in Britain, yet 19 of Britain's Prime Ministers have been to Eton). In fact, 60% of current Tory MP's went to private school. 23 of the current 29 members of the Government are millionaires, and only 3 of the 29 Ministers in the current Cabinet went to state schools. (7% of Britain's population go to private school). 20 of the current Conservative Party MP's went to Eton.

After leaving school, but before going to university, Mr Cameron worked as a Parliamentary researcher for his godfather, the Tory MP, Tim Rathbone. A few months later he went to work for a multi-national corporation in Hong Kong after his father pulled a few strings.

University
Mr Cameron attended Oxford University. In the last 70 years, 11 of Britain's 13 Prime Ministers went to Oxford or Cambridge University (Oxbridge). In fact the only two Prime Ministers since 1941 who didn't go to Oxbridge were John Major and Jim Callaghan. This is despite the fact that only 0.2% of the British population go to Oxbridge.

At Oxford Mr Cameron was also a member of the toffs' drinking society, the Bullingdon Club. His Bullingdon Club mates at Oxford University included Boris Johnson (current Mayor of London) and George Osborne (current Chancellor of the Exchequer).

Work
Straight from Oxford University Mr Cameron got a job at Conservative Party Central Office. Annabel Astor, the mother of his millionaire fiancée, Samantha Sheffield, suggested to her friend Michael Green (Chairman of Carlton Television) that he should hire Mr Cameron. So Mr Cameron went to work for Carlton Television. So Mr Cameron's C.V. reads - private prep school, Eton, Oxford University, Conservative Party Central Office, Carlton TV and Conservative MP.

Marriage
Mr Cameron married Samantha Sheffield, the daughter of a Duke who is the third largest landholder in Scotland. She is a director of one luxury goods business and owner of another and also happens to be a descendent of King Charles ll! Mr Cameron, with no sense of irony, describes his wife's upbringing as 'highly unconventional' because she was a 'day girl' i.e. she attended private school on a daily basis and didn't go to boarding school! The height of unconventionality!

Family Home
Mr Cameron owns a £2 million home in Notting Hill and a £5 million home in Oxfordshire. He lives near Chipping Norton where he regularly socialises with his friends and neighbours James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch), Rebekah Brooks (former Chief Executive of News International) and Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear). They not only drink together but ride horses together as well.

When his "messy" daughter once emerged at a social gathering in his £2 million Notting Hill house, Mr Cameron was reported as saying "you look like you've just fallen out of a council flat".

Riots
Mr Cameron castigated people who stole good during the recent riots saying that they should learn to "save up" and buy goods. Perhaps he can tell us how much saving he did to pay for going on Concorde?

So you can be sure that Mr Cameron understands your everyday concerns through his life experiences. Because, after all, he's just an 'ordinary bloke'.

(With thanks to Owen Jones for some of the material).

Pontefract and Castleford Express

18th August 2011

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

Bertolt Brecht, the German dramatist and poet, famously expounded that there were many ways to kill someone, but only some were illegal (i.e. not giving someone medicines who was dying from the lack of them, not feeding someone when food was being wasted, denying them water when there was fresh water in abundance). Bertolt would have recognised corrupt British MPS who looted money from taxpayers to keep them in the lifestyle to which that have become accustomed (new duck houses, moat cleaning, 'flipping' their mortgages on their second homes etc) who now condemn others for looting. MP's who stole money to pay for second, third and fourth homes want to evict council tenants from their only home for the misdemeanour of one of its inhabitants. MP's who gladly looted billions of pounds from the British public to give to immoral and greedy banks so that they can pay themselves huge bonuses whilst ordinary British workers are faced with wage freezes, pension worries and job insecurity.

Never, in the post-second world war period, has it been so obvious that Britain's banks exist to re-allocate money from British workers to Britain's rich. And many MP's seem to think that it is their job to help in this process, by deciding which banks are allowed to legally loot. We leave the last words to the immortal Woody Guthrie "some people rob you with a gun and some people rob you with a fountain pen".

Murdoch and the Tories - no connection?

Over the last 15 months a Cabinet member has met an executive from Rupert Murdoch's international empire every 3 days. In fact 20 Cabinet Ministers have met Murdoch executives 130 times in that period. David Cameron was at 30 of the meetings, George Osborne and Liam Fox were both at 17. Mr Osborne's meetings include a dinner in New York with Mr Murdoch on 17th December 2010, two weeks before the media regulator was due to rule on Mr Murdoch's bid for full ownership of BSkyB. Mr Osborne seems particularly friendly with Mr Murdoch's son James and Rebekah Brooks. He's met both on 3 other occasions in the last 12 months.

Both Jeremy Hunt (Culture Secretary) and Michael Gove (Education Secretary) made sure that their first meetings after their appointment to the Cabinet in 2010 were with Rupert Murdoch.

In addition, Nick Clegg has met Murdoch executives four times in the last 14 months. In all, Michael Gove has met Rupert Murdoch 7 times and Rebekah Brooks 8 times in the same period. Sandy Shaw's 'puppet on a string' comes to mind. Or, perhaps, 'only a pawn in their game'. Either way don't forget the golden rule 'he who has the gold rules'. Or at least they want us to think they do. However much they believe in George Bush's maxim 'you can fool some of the people most of the time - that's the people I'm concentrating on', the reallity is that 'an ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory' and in the last 15 months many lessons have been learnt by ordinary working people about the nature of the economic system. 'I believe everything I read in the press apart from those things of which I have had personal experience'. No amount of propaganda can cover up how the Tories combine with the right wing press to rob us. We won't forget.

Caring banks!

Credit Default Swaps is a system whereby speculators can insure against the prospect of government's "defaults". The 'scam' is you don't have to be a stakeholder to insure. So speculators are currently buying and selling CDS's in the Greek Government. At present, American banks stand to make £62 billion if the Greek government defaults on its loans. Thus it is in the interest of these banks for the Greek government to go bankrupt as they will make a great deal of money out of it. This is the equivalent of allowing an arsonist to take out an insurance policy against some else's property that he/she plans to set fire to!

What a system, where banks can make money by betting on a country going bankrupt. A country, like Greece, where a USA-inspired austerity programme has meant: -

- 15% to 30% cut in public sector wages
- a rise in VAT, for many products, from 13% to 25%
- an introduction of a 1% to 5% household tax on all household incomes
- the close of 2,000 schools
- wholesale privatisation

It's nice to know that someone, somewhere, stands to make £62 billion profit from a country going bust and the resultant suffering of its people.

Don't sit in the Sun

Never mind arresting the foot soldiers, what about arresting the Commander-in-Chief, Rupert Murdoch? On the 25th anniversary of him manufacturing the sacking of 6,000 printworkers at News International, he sacks 200 journalists. Leopards never change their spots - neither do capitalist scumbags.

All those who courted him should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who is surprised at the phone-hacking should stop looking for fairies at the bottom of their garden and get into the real world. For the Tories to assault the workers of Britain over the last 30 years they needed the help of the 'dust thrown in people's eyes' by the media.

"It says here, the unions will never learn, it says here, the economy is on the upturn" (with thanks to Billy Bragg).

Watch the following video - I was at Garforth for its premiere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBh2oAvsSSc

NEC Election Results

Just a short note to genuinely thank everyone who campaigned for me in the NEC elections. My majority in 2007 was 1,100, in 2009 was 4,500, and in 2011 was 11,000. I realise, only too well, that this can only be achieved with the selfless support of many individuals. My thanks go to those who give of their time, effort and money for those ideas which I hope that I continously propound.

We cannot rest on our laurels but neither should we neglect to reflect on our successes. I have no doubt that the issue of pensions will dominate the next period. It is the job of all trade union leaders to ensure that the gains of the past are not lost. Thank you for your support - now let's get stuck in again.

Cheers, Paul.

The Posh Boys can't hack it!

-----Well, not one year gone since the General Election and the Posh boys show how shallow they are. They're really not up to it. What should they do next?

• Get rid of May Day?

• Ban strikes with turnouts of less than 50%?

• Play the race card?

• Be condescending to women?

• Invade Libya?

• Attack welfare benefits?

Oh the agenda is endless but, fortunately, they're brains aren't. And their Posh boy friends in the Liberal Party are just as bad. The reason Nick Clegg forgot that he was Deputy Prime Minister is because, in reality, he isn't! The title's just a sop to make him feel important.

This crew really are second rate. When the going gets tough, and it's going to be very soon, what will they do next? Without any doubt the Spanish economy is going to join Portugal, Ireland and Greece in crisis. And in any economic crisis those who really run this country, the bankers, will instruct Cameron, Clegg and Osborne etc to bail the rich out in Spain like they have in Ireland, Greece and Portugal.

There are 20% more millionaires in Britain today than there were 2 years ago. (An increase from 518,000 to 620,000). This means that one person in every hundred in Britain is a millionaire. Well they're not living on my street - are they living on yours?

The class struggle has never gone away - the rich's paid lackeys in the media just want to kid you that it has. Previous generations didn't hate the Tories because they had different opinions, they hated them because they go for the jugular when it's a choice between their wealth and your standard of living.

The period we are entering into is not going to be pleasant, but neither is it going to be boring. The Tories will be lucky to survive two years never mind five. What will the Liberals get out of the Co-alition, an electoral mauling and a resentment that will last years.

What is really going on in Britain? The re-introduction of rationing. Whether it's the obvious rationing of the NHS or Welfare Benefits - or the rationing of University places with fees of £9,000 per year, which are nothing to the 620,000 millionaires. They are just a method of reducing choices for ordinary working people. Remember the rich hate competition - they're the last people that believe in it. They believe in privilege, inheritance and protectionism. (Whether it's Eton, large estates or the Law Society).

If you believe in anything you've got to believe in democracy. The right of ordinary working people to elect representatives, in Parliament or in the trade unions, who share the same standard of living as them, who are honest and can be replaced at any time by those who elected them.

0·2% of the population went to Oxbridge. Yet it has produced 11 of the last 13 prime ministers (in the last 70 years), the leaders of all three major parties (Cameron, Clegg and Miliband) and all 5 candidates in the Labour Party leadership election (Diane Abbott, Ed Miliband, David Miliband, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls). Talk about a club!

Only a class-ridden, privileged society could allow that to happen. And it is that class that rules Britain. But the future is using the talent of all society. Don't let us be divided by race, religion, nationality, language, gender or sexuality.

Why? Because the workers united, will never be defeated!

(Just in case David Cameron/ Nick Clegg's Posh boys don't understand this - what unites working people are those very things that the rich hate. Unity, harmony, peace, progress, internationalism, solidarity and equality.)

Whatever your views of the last 12 months, no-one can fail to be inspired by the 26th March demonstration. It was the very battery-charging event that many activists needed. The workers will never go down - they have to fight to survive. That is the nature of society. For those of us fortunate enough to be in leadership positions, let's make sure that we are worthy of the trust we have been given. Let's not let those down who are facing the fiercest of attacks.

Cynicism is the rust which slows down the wheel of progress. Inspiration is the oxygen on which workers' hopes live and thrive.

Whilst the bankers don't understand the satisfaction that comes from advancement of all - workers do.

THE CAUSE OF LABOUR IS THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

Cambridgeshire Unison Annual General Meeting - Speech

http://unisoncambridgeshire.org.uk/2011/02/21/paul-holmes-speaks-at-county-branch-agm-17th-february-2011/

Ballot Victory

(Click to enlarge)