Ed Miliband promises no end to working class austerity... Ed Miliband gets booed at trade union rally

      I mean, was it something he said? No, the funny thing is this mild booing (why boo when you can throw bottles?*) is being put down to the SWP brigade. I'd love it if we had a brigade. Labour hacks seem to have a recurring collective nightmare that all that stands between proper decent society and a ruthless, tentacular conspiracy to unleash working class insurrection, is them. Ed Miliband wants to save capitalism, you understand?

The only other explanation is that a large number of trade unionists have had enough of austerity, attacks on their working conditions, standards of living and the services they provide, enough to boo the leader of the Labour Party when he suggests there will be more attacks on their working conditions, standards of living and the services they provide... On Planet Miliband does not compute.

It's down to us, the working class movement, trade unions, tenants groups, student groups and broad campaigns to make a difference. Step one is march. Step two is strike.

*Online police take note, I am not suggesting this be done, merely that Ed Miliband will get over being booed. He really will.

The Tory party - it's like a lottery that rewards stupidity...

It must be a slow week for the Daily Mail. There's clearly not enough immigrants-gets-free-porsche stories to go round, so they printed this:

Britain’s biggest trade union has set up a new wing – which can only be joined by the unemployed. Tory MPs said it was ‘scandalous’ that Unite, led by the hard-Left former docker Len McCluskey, was trying to exploit benefit claimants for political and financial purposes.

Outrageous! It's for Poundland and Tesco to exploit unemployed people! 

In return for £26 a year in ‘subs’,  the jobless members of Unite Community receive perks including discount designer glasses, advice on ‘claiming the right benefits’ and a  pre-paid debit card offering cashback in high street stores.

Exploited, to the tune of 50 pence a week... and they're going to tell the unemployed what their rights are? For shame! Also, why the scare quotes around subs? Sub is short for subscription fee. Don't they have those at the Daily Heil? Perhaps direct debits are an underhand form of communism? I don't know. But here's where it gets really silly:

Last night Tory deputy chairman Sarah Newton said: ‘It is scandalous that Labour’s largest donor, Unite – which backed Ed Miliband for the leadership – is looking to politically mobilise the unemployed and plug its falling membership subs.  

‘The public expects trade unions to protect the rights of their members in the workplace – not try to fill gaps in their funding off the back of the unemployed. Is  Ed Miliband really comfortable taking money from a union that  is acting in such a cynical way?

Cynical? Well, of course, Tories are experts on British trade union history, and are only to happy to respect the terms of collective bargaining. It's a shame then that somebody who knows so much about trade unionism and only has it's best interests at heart (you shouldn't be filling any gaps in funding off the backs of h the unemployed, oh no) could have forgotten about The National Unemployed Workers Movement of the 1920s and 30s. What was Sarah Newton MP thinking, eh?

What does the Labour Party stand for...?

Ed Miliband won’t break the public sector pay freeze. Ed Balls meanwhile won’t promise to reverse public service cuts and says hard times will last longer than people had hoped (which begs the question, how long do you ‘hope’ hard times will last for?). 

While my living standards are being driven down and down in order to pay for Bankers in Need, I would be a fool to expect any help or hope from the Labour Party (and the same applies to my family, friends, co-workers, comrades and class). Miliband’s party does not standfor sectional interests, and by 'sectional interests' he means my interests. 

So who does?

Gumbies on cocaine

Tory MP Aidan Burley wants to get rid of trade union facility time. Facility time is an agreement between unions and employers whereby some members of staff can devote some or all of their time on union activity. It cannot be emphasised enough these are negotiated agreements, an essential part of collective bargaining, without which union organisation, the only strand of democracy in the workplace, is made just that bit more impossible.

Tory MP Aidan Burley goes to parties where people dress up as SS Officers, toast the third reich and belting oh-so humorous chants about the holocaust. A Tory MP toasts the Third Reich but (presumably) will keep his job... He'll probably use the Top Gear Defence. In fact, why didn't Hitler think of that when he killed those millions of people? It's all just a joke, like on Top Gear.

We might as well be ruled by Gumbies on cocaine.

With antimonies like these...!

Who needs, um... ontology? And that's as far as I got with Historical Materialism. But seriously, a note on the contradictions of class baiting: In order to get their buddy Clarkson off the hook rightwing commentators have had to insist it was all said in jest (c'mon, any fool knows Clarkson does want to see us all shot, he just doesn't think it's practical right now). The trouble is the strike wasn't in jest, hence the 'joke' fell flat. Days ago the right was screaming blue murder about the cost to the economy, now they have to about face and dismiss the strikers as having non-jobs.

Similarly Cameron has claimed Wednesday's strike was a damp squib and, 24 hours later, obviously big.

Which is it, we're left wondering? For rightwingers it's both and everything.