geoff sez

Left Field - The Movie

2008-09-18T04:07:00.002-07:00

Mixing Pop and Politics - Left Field The Movie

Take a stroll around the Glastonbury Festival site and you’ll see many interesting things from great bands through to the weird and wonderful but one thing you won’t see much of is the kind of corporate branding that’s plastered all over the V’s, Reading and any number of wannabe festival contenders.

On the other hand, one thing that you’d find very hard to miss at Glastonbury is the 60 foot revolving Left Field tower with it’s laser-lit star and it’s images from the global struggle for economic social justice. And below that tower – bang-smack on the busiest crossroads on the site – sits the Left Field itself where we cook up our blend of music, campaigning, organising, comedy and film into a unique blend which pulls the punters in by the thousands.

It’s a real testament to the principles of Michael and Emily Eavis that while the big corporates struggle to grab a piece of the action at Glastonbury, the trade union movement has steamed in, shoved them aside and rammed the banner of international solidarity firmly into the Somerset mud.

We started small at the Left Field back in 2002 with little more than a drum riser in the corner of a beer tent but in that seven years we have grown to be one of the biggest covered venues on site with a stellar international line up to match.

None of this would have happened without the leverage of the Battersea and Wandsworth TUC and its trading arm the Workers Beer Company. It was that connection that got us the Glastonbury gig and it’s a testament to the hard graft of the thousands of Workers Beer volunteers who pull the pints at events up and down the country that their efforts have helped make the Left Field happen.

This year we kicked off with a reggae/ska spectacular for our good friends at Anti Slavery International, all topped off by the Levellers who paid there own way to get on site because they wanted to back the Left Field and our campaigns. That’s real commitment.

Come the Friday and the Alabama 3 were in town for Miscarriages of Justice Organisation and anyone who saw Paddy Hill from the Birmingham 6 rapping to Woke Up This Morning would have felt the goose bumps and the raw emotion just like me and the rest of the crew. Lose that feeling, and you’ve lost the lot.

GMB and UNISON brought in some of the biggest contemporary acts from Poland to pump up the profile of their migrant worker campaigning and organising and Mark Serwotka from PCS got to introduce fellow south Wales lads The Automatic while the crew chanted “What’s that coming over the hill? Is it Serwotka? Is it Serwotka” Magic.

The FBU looked after stewarding and the RMT kept everyone supplied with clean T Shirts which was a rare treat for those of us who’d been on site for over a week.

We pulled off a massive media coup with Carl Barat from the Dirty Pretty Things, and formerly the Libertines, doing his first ever solo set anywhere. He was joined for a couple of numbers by our International Cultural Attache Billy Bragg in a night dedicated to prisoner rehabilitation.

And we do all this under the banner of the international trade union movement and what’s taken me aback is just how many artists out there not only support the trade unions and our key campaigns but they want to be SEEN to be supporting us. We’ve just not been very good at asking them.

So at the TUC we will premiere the Left Field 2008 movie – made by London Firefighter and my co-conspirator at Militant Entertainment Alan Miles – with Don Letts on the decks and some very special guests lined up.

We want to move the Left Field idea on as a vehicle for the trade union movement – tour it around the country and we are even looking at taking it to Austin next year for the South By South West festival deep in the heart of redneck Texas.

MERRILL LYNCH RAID ON GP SERVICES.....

2008-09-18T04:07:00.001-07:00

FINANCIAL BASKET CASE MERRILL LYNCH TO TAKE OVER UK GP SERVICES

Campaigners today demanded that the Government intervene to stop the asset strippers from the shady world of private equity from taking over a huge chunk of the UK's GP and primary care services.

City analysts have confirmed that some of the biggest beasts in the world of global private equity – including the financial basket case Merrill Lynch - are eyeing up government contracts worth a cool £1.25 billion for the running of over 250 GP and primary health care centres - with each contract underpinned with taxpayers cash.

Geoff Martin, Head of Campaigns at pressure group Health Emergency, said:

"It defies belief that this Labour Government would even consider knocking out your local GP services to the asset-strippers and corporate raiders from the dodgy world of private equity.

If Merrill Lynch are in the frame to take over primary health care services in the UK, what next? XL Airlines running the air ambulance? It’s a sick joke.

The track record of these guys is to hit and run to maximise their returns. Opening the door of the GP surgery to private equity is the ultimate measure of this Government's obsession with big business and just underlines why their core supporters are lining up to give them a kicking at every opportunity."

Back with a Briefing Bonanza....

2008-09-18T04:07:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks up in the hills south of Alicante I was a bit cut off from the outside world and when I rocked up at home in the rain and flicked on the last knockings of the Olympics I genuinely thought I’d missed some sort of coup and that the Tories were already back in power.

There on the screen at the Olympic handover was Boris Johnson, the slimy grin of Seb Coe and a bloke who looked vaguely familiar who I suddenly realised was former Tory minister Colin Moynihan. OK, there was some miserable fat bloke skulking in the background who looked a bit like Richard Nixon and I think the slightly manic looking woman who occasionally bobbed up into the frame may have been Tessa Jowell but make no bones about this was the Tories gig and they were loving it.

And then it suddenly struck me – get use to it son cos this is what’s coming and as the remnants of New Labour hit the self destruct button and render our Party unelectable we’ll all be pitched back to year zero, well 1987 anyway.

I read somewhere that Charles Clarke is driven by vanity and delusion. Well, if there’s a vainer ugly geezer than this guy I have yet to meet him and I’ve been out on the tiles with Shaun Ryder! I saw Clarke once on a train up to Labour Party conference and I genuinely thought someone was having a laugh with the prize exhibit from the Royal London Hospital museum – but this wasn’t John Hurt after hours of make up, this was the real deal.

Yes, yes I know, I’m not exactly Jude Law but the point I am making is this – just who the fuck does Charles Clarke think he is?

You could not put a fag paper between him and Brown on policy issues and they both – along with the rest of Blair’s cabinets and the current bunch of no-hopers – share a huge responsibility for the effluent that is currently slopping around our feet.

We can all pick out the abject failures to deliver over the last eleven years that have disengaged Labour’s core support as the leadership have fallen over themselves to suck up to the powerful and the wealthy at the expense of the very people who put their well-paid arses on the green benches and who needed them to deliver so badly.

Health. That’s my benchmark. You may have seen reported a couple of weeks back that the Government have admitted that they will fail miserably to hit their target to close the health gap between rich and poor. Not only that, but on the key indicators of infant mortality and life expectancy the chasm between the haves and have nots is actually widening.

Another recent study has shown that the outcomes for cancer patients in the wealthy areas of the UK far outstrip the survival rates in working class communities.

That’s the indictment at the top of the charge sheet that I would lay before Brown, Johnson and the rest of the cabinet – if a Labour government can’t even make the slightest progress on closing the health gap, and in fact presides over its widening, then they deserve the kicking that the electorate are gearing up to mete out.

And yes, I know that things will be even worse under the Tories but that argument carries not the slightest bit of weight compared to the disgust and anger that huge numbers of core Labour supporters feel about their betrayal by this shower of lightweights, chancers and opportunists.

An East London GP told me many years ago that the best advice he could give his patients was: if you want to be healthy, don’t be poor. That advice could be plastered across the backdrop at Labour’s conference this year rather than the usual bland slogan drawn up by some ad agency.

Willie Williams once sang in Armagideon Time – a tune later covered by the Clash – that;

A lot of people won’t get no justice tonight
A lot of people won’t get no supper tonight

He knew a thing or two about the credit crunch and he also advised us that;

A lot of people gonna have to stand up and fight

That’ll do for me.

LEFT FIELD OPENS EARLY FOR ANTI-SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL

2008-06-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

LEVELLERS HEADLINE GLASTONBURY THURSDAY NIGHT FOR ANTI-SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL

Glastonbury’s union-organised Left Field stage will be opening up a day early this year on Thursday with festival favourites the Levellers headlining a very special night in support of the work of Anti-Slavery International.

Fitting perfectly with the traditional, campaigning spirit of Glastonbury, Anti-Slavery International will be signing up festival-goers to their vital work in combating the modern slave trade.

Mark Chadwick from the Levellers said:

"We are delighted to donate our time to play on the Left Field Stage to
support Anti-Slavery International and the millions of people in slavery
worldwide who are denied their voice."

Gemma Wolfs from Anti Slavery International added:

"Anti-Slavery International is particularly grateful to the Levellers
for lending their voice in protest against slavery worldwide by
headlining Glastonbury Left Field's Anti Slavery night.”

NOTE TO EDITORS

Even in the 21st century at least 12 million people around the world are
trapped in forms of slavery which prevent them from making the choices
about their lives that most of us take for granted. From children
illegally recruited into armies as child soldiers to women trafficked
thousands of miles into domestic work, modern slavery takes many forms.
Anti-Slavery International, founded in 1839, is the world's oldest
international human rights organisation and the only UK charity
committed to eliminating all forms of slavery around the world. Slavery
is an inhuman and degrading practice which must not be allowed to
persist in the 21st century. You can take a stand against it and join
the campaign at www.antislavery.org

BENN BACK AT GLASTO

2008-06-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

TONY BENN BACK AT GLASTONBURY FOR LEFT FIELD RALLY

Veteran socialist and campaigner Tony Benn will be back at Glastonbury Festival’s Left Field this year to rally the Sunday afternoon crowds on the theme “Another World is Possible”.

Benn, possibly the oldest performer at this years Glastonbury, has been treading the boards at the union-organised Left Field since it kicked off in 2002. This year he will be sharing the Left Field stage with the likes of the Levellers, Alabama 3, The Rascals, British Sea Power and Billy Bragg.

Tony Benn will on the Left Field at one o’clock on the Sunday afternoon for what has now become a fixture in the Glastonbury programme which sees five thousand people jammed into the Left Field to soak up the message of peace, love and understanding.

Tony Benn said:

“When people ask me if another world is possible, I say “of course it is”, and if you don’t believe me come and join with the 5000 people at Glastonbury’s Left Field on the Sunday lunchtime who are crying out for peace, freedom and social justice.”

Geoff Martin, Left Field Director, said:

“Tony Benn has a connection with the Glastonbury crowd that is based on a mutual respect that the vast majority of politicians would give their right arm for. We are delighted he’s coming back to give it another blast and we know that we’ll be jammed full with people who do care about the future of our planet.”

HERE COME THE SICKO'S.....

2008-06-10T14:02:00.001-07:00

"SICKO" COMPANIES LINE UP TO TAKE OVER NHS POLYCLINICS

Campaigners warned today that the Amercican private healthcare companies exposed in the Michael Moore movie "Sicko" are being lined up to take over the first wave of health service Polyclinicis due to be unveiled shortly.

Pressure group Health Emergency are turning the spotlight on the United Healthcare - the biggest of the profit-making US health corporations whose Euopean chief is Simon Stevens who used to advise Tony Blair on health policy and who was head-hunted by United to drive their business into the UK NHS.

United Healthcare are already muscling in on UK GP services including the takeover of three GP surgeries in Camden where their involvement is being strongly resisted by a high-profile local campaign.

The Polyclinics plan for large, centralised GP super-centres is the cornerstone of health minister Lord Darzis review of the NHS. There is growing evidence that the Polyclinics will be run by profit-making private sector companies with United Healthcare at the front of the queue.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns who is meeting with Lord Darzi tomorrow, said:

" I will be demanding answers from Lord Darzi on the scale of private sector involvement in his proposed Polyclinics and will be warning him that there will be massive public opposition to the idea of companies like United Healthcare profiteering from the privatisation of local GP services.

Politically it is suicide for the Labour Government to open the doors of our GP surgeries to the Sicko companies with their appalling track record in the States."

NEW LABOUR BACK ON PRIVATISATION TRACK

2008-06-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

CAMPAIGNERS SLAM NHS PRIVATISATION PLAN

Health campaigners tonight slammed plans due to be unveiled by the Government tomorrow which will see private companies like BUPA and American giants United Heathcare take over the running of entire NHS hospitals.

This evening, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw admitted that the Government was looking to sell "franchises" in NHS hospitals similar to the selling of franchises for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Campaigners have set out to nail the lie that private companies have been a success in the NHS, pointing out that:

* Privatisation destroyed cleaning standards in the NHS paving the way for MRSA and C Diff to get a deadly grip on the wards.

* Private companies involved in NHS PFI schemes have ripped off the taxpayer to the tune of billions

* Privately run Independent Sector Treatment Centres have been a disaster with the taxpayer paying for operations never carried out.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"The Government's suicide mission to alienate core supporters takes another leap with this effort to privatise the NHS on a scale that even Maggie Thatcher would have balked at.

The big American health corporations will be scenting blood and the opportunity to make a killing on the UK's NHS hospital wards.

There will one almighty row about this, that's for sure."

BRIEFING LATEST.....

2008-06-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

So I’ve just seen Alistair Darling announcing his emergency budget as the shattered remnants of the New Labour project pull on every last lever in their desperate efforts to cling to power.

I can understand why. There’s a whole generation of New Labour politicians, advisers and hangers on who have never had a proper job, have lived a life of unrelenting privilege for the past decade and are suddenly confronted with the harsh realities of having to work for a living.

That’s why I find the attacks on the Tories for being a bunch of Toffs laughable. Yes, I hate the upper class and the elitists with a passion – I’ll be the first one to “sup up my beer and collect my fags” if the legendary Right to Work march “row going on, down near Slough” referenced in the Jam’s Eton Rifles ever kicked off again.

By the way, I was delighted to see that Paul Weller turned down a CBE and a picture opportunity with Blair because he didn’t want to be photographed with a “fucking war criminal.” Get in my son!

Anyway, back to the point. Yes, Boris, Cameron and Osbourne are a bunch of silver spoon fed scum but would you seriously expect to bump into Harriet Harman or one of the Milibands in the check out queue at Tescos? No, not unless they were there for a photo op – mixing with the proles in their stab vests with a police minder close at hand.

And that’s how you end up as out of touch with reality as New Labour has right now. Once you become a laughing stock in politics you are well and truly done for and I don’t see any way back. Changing policies – even the big jobbies like hitting the low paid with a crazed tax policy – just won’t cut it. The sense that real people, not just the commentators, have had a gutful is palpable.

My union, the NUJ, isn’t affiliated to the Labour Party but if it were I’d be asking questions about the wisdom of handing over anything other than a basic affiliation fee. It’s like giving money to a crack addict, you know that whatever they promise you they will only waste it on more of the same, and that they’ll look like shit next
time you see them. Check out Gordon on the breakfast TV sofas and you’ll see what I mean.

I live with a highly trained clinician with two decades experience in critical care and she’ll tell you that there is proven medical evidence that you can’t resuscitate a corpse. So why prop up the cadaver of New Labour like Breshnev at a May Day parade and try tell us that all is well?

It’s all a load of bollocks and the only solution as far as I can see it is for the unions and the Labour Left to work up a set of demands based on a real understanding of what’s going on out there and if those demands aren’t met we pull the plug and allow The Project to stew in it’s own juice.

Here’s Geoff’s policy “hit parade” which might just save this Government’s skin:
· A windfall tax on the oil company and bank profits and that money invested straight back in to tax breaks for the low paid, a fair deal for carers and a decent increase in state pensions.

· Raise the minimum wage to £6.50 an hour with rigorous policing as a kick up the arse to the gangmasters and a serious effort to tackle the abuse of migrant workers and to show that everyone on low pay has an interest in sticking together.

· Scrap the whole privatisation, PFI , outsourcing, marketisation agenda and send out a signal that the bad old days of private companies exploiting public services in their own money-grabbing interests are over.

· Stop punishing public sector workers – Labour’s natural supporters for Christ sake – with below inflation pay increases while boardroom pay, the Non Doms and the city bonus boys are all having a laugh at our expense.

· Bring the troops back from Iraq and Afganistan – not at some unspecified point in the future but right now and show everyone that we’ve finally stopped playing poodle to Bush and the CIA.

· Open up youth clubs, sports facilities, rehearsal spaces, radio stations and whatever else it takes to give kids some sense of value and purpose other than just a relentless barrage of exams and educational targets.

· Spend our way out of the looming recession. If private sector housebuilding is collapsing what better time to build council houses, schools and hospitals and youth centres with all that surplus labour?

That’s just for starters and in the Spirit of 68, when these demands are met, a fresh list will be duly submitted….

REPORT FROM BRIXTON ACADEMY

2008-05-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hope lives on and on
(Friday 02 May 2008)
LIVE: Rock Against Racism/Hope Not Hate 2008
Brixton Academy, London

JAMES TWEEDIE gets into the spirit of things at Hope Not Hate's anti-fascist barnstormer.

Rock Against Racism organiser Geoff Martin reckons that he's "one lucky bastard" to have worked in politics and the music biz, although it hasn't done his hairline any good.

He certainly knows how to combine music and politics, as tonight's anti-fascist barnstormer amply attests.

There's a fantastic atmosphere, like a pub gig attended by all your mates. The crowd is just as diverse as Sunday's Love Music Hate Racism festival in Victoria Park. Young and old, boys and girls, black and white trade unionists, Trots and tankies are all united in the common purpose of having fun and smashing the BNP tonight.

Teenage reggae-punks The Thirst kick off to an almost empty house at the cavernous Brixton Academy, which is a shame as they're very good.

"Brixton's finest," as co-compere and Rock Against Racism veteran Tom Robinson calls them, aren't at all bothered by their sound echoing round the hall or the handful of half-hearted dancers down the front. Watch out for this lot in the sweatboxes, where they promise to be lethal.

Hairy old punk folkers The Levellers follow, drum tight and full of energy. They slow it down and acoustic it up on The Boatman, assisted by didgeridoo player Stephen Boakes. who wears a kilt, clown make-up and feather boa.

The crazed didger sticks around for One Way, appropriately running about the stage like AC/DC guitarist Angus Young.

Maybe the swelling crowd is getting better lubricated, but Carry Me sees the craic in the pit in canny fettle at last. As singer Mark Chadwick asks, "Who says political music is dead?"

The place is packed to the rafters by the time Misty In Roots take the stage. Veterans of the 1979 anti-National Front protests in their home town of Southall, Misty play old-school reggae with no bullshit.

Their classic sound fills the huge theatre with ease, washing over the masses like a warm wave, their Morricone-esque brass trio wailing and lamenting atop the pumping rhythm section.

They sing of African liberation and institutional racism, with vocalist Walford Townsend (below left) saying: "They had to wait until a black youth was killed before they found that racism was an institution."

Electro-country bluesters Alabama 3 hit the stage in a burst of strobes and glares of pure white back-light. Their ambient psycho-billy gets the crowd moving right away.

Co-singer Devlin Love is in fine voice tonight, like a post-pop Edith Piaf.

The band hit the audience's wavelength on singalong number U Don't Danse 2 Tekno Anymore, after which it's a long rollercoaster ride home for these natural successors to Primal Scream, that band of my distant youth.

Alabama 3's super-duper light show and lack of audience banter make it all a bit more impersonal than it should be on a night like this, but a good time is still had by all.

The stage starts to resemble Parliament - of the funkadelic variety - as the world and his mum join in on closer Shoot Me Up.

Robinson lets us go with the order to "kick the BNP's backside." Hope Not Hate in 2008 - right on!

30 years on from vicky park

2008-05-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

RAR

When I was in my early teens the height of our aspiration was to be a “face” on the shed end at Stamford Bridge – to be cool and hard as best you could in a stripy tank top and a pair of high-waste Oxford bags.

A few months before I picked up a copy of the first Clash single I’d been thrown out of the away end at Fulham for being an obnoxious little git. I was fourteen and I thought I was Jack the Lad.

So why this trip down the memory lane of my adolescence? Simple. An event thirty years ago, not that long after I’d picked up, and learnt off by heart, The Clash by the Clash, turned my life around and changed me into the political activist that I still am.

Rock Against Racism. The Anti-Nazi League and the march from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park on the 30th April 1978.

I have hazy memories of the day itself but the sense of collective spirit and energy still flows through me – that and the realisation that you could do something political and have fun doing it with people of your same age group. The mind blowing days in dusty Labour Halls wading line by line through minutes and apologies for absence were yet to come.

I’d gone to Vicky Park first off to see the Clash but I was well aware of the politics of the event. If you were a young punk, bunking the tube and train into town to gigs in 77 and 78 , you knew all about the NF and the British Movement.

One night I narrowly escaped getting beaten to a pulp by the BM leader guard on the platform of Chalk Farm tube after a Generation X gig at the Roundhouse. I was also there the infamous night the fascists took over a Clash gig at Crawley leisure centre where random violence stalked the hall and even the support band – the aptly-named Suicide – got a serious kicking.

I work with a lot of young bands now and when I explain to them what it was like going to a punk gig in the late 70’s, early 80’s, when it was pound to a penny that there’d be a serious ruck, they look at me in disbelief.

So I had the ultimate respect for the girls and geezers who’d launched RAR just when we needed it most and I still think that their biggest achievement was Vicky Park and I can only tip my hat to the sheer bottle they had in pulling off such and extraordinary event.

You see, most of the people there were young – or very young. I’d never been on a march before. Mark Steel tells the story of how he pitched up thinking that you literally had to march in military formation.

And it was a seriously long march right through the East End which thirty years ago was a fascist strong hold at least on the streets and in some of main boozers. We followed a flat bed truck where one of my favourite bands, the Members, must have played the same set half a dozen times – only stopping for a beer and a fag and to top up the generator with diesel.

When we finally reached the park we caught the end of X Ray Spex. We saw Steel Pulse, and if I owe no other debt to the Clash and RAR it was turning me on to reggae.

Then the Clash came on – you could hardly hear a thing as the massed crowd surged backwards and forwards. Tom Robinson rightfully closed the show – the bloke who had not only led from the front against the racists but who forced many of us to rethink our own ingrained homophobia.

If I had such a thing as a moral compass I would like to think that due North would be RAR in Vicky Park in 78. I went to loads of other Rock Against Racism and political gigs but that one event was special, not only to me but to loads of other people I meet in politics, trade unionism, the music industry and the media.

I’m one lucky bastard because I now work in all those fields – something that I wouldn’t have believed possible when I was sitting in the careers office in the summer of 78.

But before I get all misty eyed we have to remind ourselves that the threat of the far right getting serious political representation right here and now is more real than it was when the NF were strutting the streets. The fateful timing of the Vicky Park anniversary, the eve of the London elections, is a warning shot from somewhere.

So yes we need to celebrate our political and cultural heritage but not before we’ve done the hard work first.

HOPE NOT HATE/RAR LATEST....

2008-03-10T04:53:00.000-07:00

THE LEVELLERS JOIN LINE UP FOR ROCK AGAINST RACISM ANNIVERSARY SHOW
Fresh from their packed out show at the Brixton Academy this weekend, The Levellers have confirmed today that they will be returning to the venue on Wednesday the 30th April for the Rock Against Racism Victoria Park Anniversary show.

The Levellers will join long-time anti-racist campaigners the Alabama 3 and reggae legends and RAR stalwarts Misty in Roots along with The Thirst and Tom Robinson whose band headlined at Vicky Park. Veteran socialist and Glastonbury Left Field favourite Tony Benn , who spoke at the RAR Carnival 30 years ago, will also be hitting the stage.

The 30th of April is also the eve of the crucial London elections which are being heavily targeted by the BNP and the Brixton Academy show will be the culmination of a national Hope Not Hate campaign supported by the UK’s major trade unions, anti-racist campaigns and the Daily Mirror.

Tony Benn, who will be rallying the crowd at Brixton in a final push against the far-right in London, said:

“Popular culture is a very important part of the fight against fascism and we need the broadest based campaign possible. That’s why I’ll be at Brixton Academy on the 30th April.

We must never let the racists win by default and making anti-fascism something that people can actually enjoy helps enormously. You realise that you’re not on your own and that gives us the confidence to challenge the BNP.

When you get to my age you realise that every generation has to fight the same battles and I am pleased to be able to help in any way I can.”

BRIEFING LATEST - MIND YER FINGERS!

2008-03-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

So where do you start on the non-doms business?

I had the dubious pleasure of debating this issue with some knob from the accountancy firm Grant Thornton on the Jeremy Vine Show. The gist of his argument was that if the Government didn’t allow billionaire gangsters to continue to take the piss out of British taxpayers then they would decamp to Monaco or the Virgin Islands. Not only that, but they would pull all their UK investments and blow a dirty great hole straight through the middle of our economy.

And so with their fifth columnist Digby Brown operating behind government lines to destabilise what was in the first place a pathetically weedy approach to extracting anything out of the non-doms, Alistaire Darling ran for the hills in terror.

Let’s be clear, the whinging from the super-rich in defence of the culture of corporate welfare is the ultimate insult to pensioners, the low paid and everyone in the public services who has been told that they must accept a below inflation pay increase to help bail out the government and to keep the vintage Krug flowing in the boardrooms and in the private suites of the Park Lane Hilton.

It was Mandleson who said that New Labour was relaxed about people getting “filthy rich” – so relaxed that they are happy to exempt them from the basic tax requirements that apply to everyone else.

If Greek shipping magnates can get an immediate result by holding a gun to the head of the Government aren’t we getting a message here? Staff on the hospital wards, in the town halls and in the dole offices can’t upsticks and head off to Bermuda but collectively they can make the government feel a damn site more uncomfortable than the perma-tanned gangsters of the non-dom scroungers club.

And here’s a lesson in the perils of PFI. Take a trip to the edges of south east London to the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley – but take care if you do.

The Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust has the biggest debts of any health body in the country at just a shade under £100 million – small change to a non-dom but enough to leave hospital services across outer South East London effectively bankrupt.

And why are they in this mess? Simple, debt charges at the PRU associated with carrying the costs of the private companies who built it. This is a brand new hospital but a recent Health Commission flying visit literally found blood up the walls.

London Health Emergency have called for a public inquiry into the financial mess at the Princess Royal and a full investigation into whether or not the desperate efforts to pay off the private sector investors have compromised patient care. We refuse to believe that the two are unrelated.

We always warned that it would take a while for the real impact on health budgets of the flawed PFI hospital building schemes to unravel – there is growing evidence that the chickens are now coming home to roost and they’re bringing the turkeys the geese and the ducks with them. Don’t be under any illusions of the long-term consequences of the dash to PFI public sector capital projects – there’s a long way to go yet.

Many thanks to everyone whose bought tickets for the Hope Not Hate/ Rock Against Racism event at the Brixton Academy on Wednesday the 30th April – the exact 30th Anniversary of the Victoria Park Anti-Nazi League carnival and the eve of the crucial London elections.

Where else would you get to see Alabama 3, the legendary Misty in Roots, Tom Robinson and Tony Benn on the same bill? We can also promise you some very special guests. Get your tickets now for a one-off event which will be the culmination of the London campaign this spring.

RAR CLUB NIGHT ROCKS BRIXTON

2008-02-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

The launch of the RAR/HOPE NOT HATE club night at Brixton Jamm on friday 8th Feb was a stunning success.

The club was packed out with music fans and press fired up for the usual RAR mix of pop and politics and for some of us old-timers it was a lovely trip down memory lane so it was a pleasure to have Jerry Dammers from the Specials and Skegsy from the Ruts on hand to reminise about the good old days and to compare the visible signs of middle age.

Essex lads the Marlers got us underway followed by the Mentalists who proved once again that the judges on Channel Fours Mobile Act Unsigned know nothing.

Then the Krak did their stuff and proved what a wise move it was for the Militant Entertainment lable to sign them up - they will be massive and between successive toe-tappers of the highest order they sent out an anti-bnp message to the growing crowd.

Local heros the Thirst showed why they are tipped by the NME to be massive this year - Pete Doherty made it down but due to a hold up at the studio in Wandsworth wasn't able to do a tune but we all appreciated his support for this important night.

And so we headed into the small hours with the Others. The lost bass player was eventually located and the place went nuts with beer sloshed about, a stage invasion and general mayhem. Dominic Masters did the honours with an expletive laced tirade against the fascists. Top work Dom

Dammers DJ'd the main bar and I stumbled off out into the south london night with me voice hoarse, me knees aching and a little bit Guinnessed up but happy that we'd done Red Saunders and the RAR legacy proud.

RAR BRIXTON SHOW

2008-02-03T03:27:00.001-08:00

briefing column - don't touch that dial!

2008-02-03T03:25:00.000-08:00

When I was a councillor in Merton back in the eighties, a young Tory member accused me of having been a leading light in the Winter of Discontent locally. Her name was Teresa May and she was totally wrong.Far from organising picket rotas, during the winter of 78/79 I was hanging around the gates of the girls school on my Fizzy, thrashing a punk rock electric guitar down the youth club and trying to convince my parents that I was actually working really hard on my O levels.

It wasn’t until a year or two later that I took my first steps on the road of industrial militancy in the pay disputes in the NHS that swiftly followed the election of the Thatcher government. That’s where and when I learnt the truths and the myths of the Winter of Discontent.

An old communist porter, Jack Hensman, now sadly no longer with us, instilled in met that the victory of Thatcher was nothing to do with the uprising of low paid public service workers and was everything to do with a Labour government which chose to make the people doing the dirtiest jobs pay for an economic crisis not of their making. We had nothing to be ashamed of.

Thatcher recognised the power of organised blue collar workers and bust us apart with her privatisation policy but that’s another story.

They say that those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and that’s the path that Brown and his cabinet have embarked on with their aim of screwing down public sector pay for the foreseeable future in the face of the economic turbulence about to engulf them.

This is suicidal stuff. A government that can’t piece together the hard facts of life of escalating fuel bills, transport costs and the basic essentials of keeping a roof over your head and food on the table is on a one way ticket to Palookaville. When Cabinet ministers can’t remember whether or not a hundred grand passed in and out of their trousers the contempt and derision in the dole offices, the town halls and on the wards is surely going to turn round and bite you on the arse at the ballot box.

Few things underscore the disconnected nature of the Brown regime than the sight of David Beckham at Downing Street being unveiled as a special envoy. A talentless, one trick pony scooping tens of millions from stupid Americans on a scale that even puts

· Meanwhile, back in the real world….

The nonsense of the government’s NHS funding regime has been exposed at the Henderson Hospital just up the road from me and a unit that I used to represent as a NUPE official.

The Henderson is a specialist national unit providing ground-breaking services for people with complex mental health problems and has a worldwide reputation for innovation. Exactly the sort of service that the NHS ought to be proud of.

If the South West London and St Georges mental health trust and NHS London get their way the Henderson will be closed at the end of March, a victim of an NHS funding system which takes no recognition of the importance of nationally funded specialist services.

This is a flaw in the system and one that the Government has to step in and sort out before 60 years of pioneering work at the Henderson is sacrificed to keep the accountants and the bureaucrats happy.

A judicial review on behalf of the patients at the Henderson is being put together and you can help the campaign, To sign the petition go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SaveHenderson/

Please help this important campaign.

· And on the road to rock and roll….

The events to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rock Against Racism Vicky Park Carnival this April are well under way as you can see from the ad below – get your tickets now.

And Jail Guitar Doors is ripping along with the support of a whole stack of artists, the POA and others and a great new Strummer shirt is available from www.philosophyfootball.com with the proceeds to Jail Guitar Doors.

RAR - HOPE NOT HATE - 3Oth ANNIVERSARY

2008-01-13T02:30:00.000-08:00

NEW STRUMMER SHIRT FOR JAIL GUITAR DOORS

2008-01-07T04:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a great new Strummer shirt from my compadres at Philosophy Football. A healthy chunk of the sale price goes to Jail Guitar Doors - putting guitars into prisons in memory of Joe.

www.philosophyfootball.com

MEANEST HOSPITAL IN BRITAIN

2008-01-02T03:17:00.001-08:00

CAMPAIGNERS AWARD "MEANEST HOSPITAL IN BRITAIN" TITLE FOR 2007

Campaigners today announced the winners of the Meanest Hospital in Britain title for 2007 with the award going to the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust in South London.

Epsom and St Helier landed the title for repeated acts of stinginess throughout the year but their winning effort came from the decision to remove one in three lightbulbs back in February 2007. The Trust also scrapped hot meals for patients at lunchtime, asked staff to do their own cleaning in some areas and attempted to ban the issuing of pyjamas and nighties. Epsom and St Helier also boasts one of the highest hourly rates for car parking in the country.

Epsom and St Helier had to beat off stiff competition and the runners up this year are the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust. Maidstone was plunged into the worst NHS scandal in many years back in October when a report revealed that 90 patients had died from a C Diff outbreak. The Trust was caught out trying to smuggle Chief Executive Rose Gibb out through the back door with a massive pay off - a move later blocked by the Government.

However, only a few months earlier Rose Gibb has asked nurses and other staff to come in and work for free on their days off and to give up their annual leave to help the hospital managers balance the books. Just a few days after issuing the memo Gibb departed on a family holiday to Lanzarote.

Other contenders in this years Meanest Hospital award were:

* Royal Hampshire County Hospital - fingered in a major report on food hygiene standards and put on special measures with six-monthly inspections.

* Southampton University Hospital - top of the league for hospital car parking profiteering with an annual take of £2.414 million followed closely by Cambridge University Hospitals at £2.263 million.

* Derby Hospitals NHS Trust - planning to downgrade and cut the wages of 100 nurses and 70 health care assistants as part of a "re-organisation".

* The Department of Health and the Government - a special mentioning for their efforts to "stage" the NHS pay award this year to squeeze a few extra quid out of the pay packets of nurses and the rest of the health care team.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Millions of pounds is being wasted in the NHS on bureaucrats and management consultants who charge us a fortune to come up with barmy, penny piching measures like removing light bulbs and asking nurses to work for nothing. Front line care and basic standards are compromised while the men in suits with their clipboards patrol the wards cooking up dangerous, cash-saving scams.

Health Emergency will continue to shine a light into the murky corners on NHS finance and management throughout 2008 and any Trust who thinks that they can get away with hacking away at the fabric of the National Health Service would be wise to think again."

RAR08

2007-12-19T00:31:00.000-08:00

CAMPAIGNERS ANNOUNCE SHOW TO MARK 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROCK AGAINST RACISM CARNIVAL
Campaigners and trade unions today announced the first in a series of events that will mark the 30th anniversary of the famous Rock Against Racism Carnival in Victoria Park in April 1978 when 100,000 marched from Trafalgar Square to Hackney in opposition to the National Front and to hear the Clash, Tom Robinson and Steel Pulse.

Long-time campaigners the Alabama 3 will be joined by RAR stalwarts Misty in Roots, veteran orator Tony Benn and some very special guests at the Brixton Academy on Wednesday the 30th April 2008 - the exact 30th anniversary of the Vicky Park Carnival and the eve of the crucial London GLA elections.

The event has been pulled together by the team behind the Left Field stage at Glastonbury festival with the support of the UK's biggest trade unions. All proceeds will go to a legacy project taking the modern history of Rock Against Racism into schools and colleges.

Larry Love from the Alabama 3 said:

"Anti racism is not just for Christmas, New Year or bank holiday marches - it's a commitment The Alabama 3 has made for life and anyone serious about dealing with racism has to embrace that reality. Unless we maintain a permanent state of aggression against racism and fascism and explain its roots it can still grow. Alabama 3 has received death threats for its anti-racist work around our Outlaw events. We urge all anti-racists to come out on the 30th April and show the fascists how we feel."

Mick Rix, from the GMB and Chair of anti-fascist group Trade Union Friends of Searchlight, said:

"The Trade Unions have long been at the heart of the fight against racism and fascism and we are delighted to support this event. No one should underestimate the importance of the RAR Carnival in April 1978 and it's lasting legacy. We need to draw on the spirit of that day in the on-going fight against racism and fascism 30 years on."

Academy Events & Militant Entertainment present
Hope Not Hate 2008
marking the 30th anniversary of the Rock Against Racism carnival

featuring Alabama 3 and Misty in Roots
with Tony Benn and very special guests to be announced

Wednesday 30th April 2008
Carling Academy Brixton

Tickets £20, £16 NUS, UB40 and OAP's
from www.academy-music-group.co.uk

supported by UNISON, UNITE, GMB, RMT, FBU, SERTUC and the Daily Mirror

I HATE UNITED! - LATEST BRIEFING RANT

2007-11-28T00:44:00.000-08:00

I know that Michael Moore isn’t everybody’s cup of tea but I can heartily recommend a trip to your local flea pit to catch Sicko while it’s still on general release.

The living nightmare which is the US healthcare system should make you both angry and very afraid because the glaring gap in the Moore movie is that those same companies who have inflicted pain and misery on tens of millions in the States are being lined up to plunder the NHS.

United Health are without any doubt the greediest and the most aggressive of the bunch. They are also the smartest when it comes to buying influence and they knew exactly where to splash the cash when it came to influencing New Labour health policy.

So step forward Simon Stevens– former advisor to Blair and health ministers – who now resides in Minnesota directing European strategy for United.

I’ve never met this bloke but I don’t like the smell of him one little bit. According to the Observer, Stevens has been busy meeting with health ministers, including Lord Darzi who is said to be a big fan. And guess what? United are one of the 14 corporations lined up to take over GP commissioning in the UK and already have their foot well and truly jammed in the door in the pit villages of Derbyshire where their involvement has been resisted by a brave and determined local campaign.

When Brown took over, and when Johnson replaced Hewitt as Health Secretary, it was suggested by some that there might be a policy shift away from the privatisation agenda. Don’t believe it.

Despite the fact that the private Independent Sector Treatment Centre’s (ISTC’s) have ripped off nearly a quarter of a billion from the patient care budget for operations that have never been down, and despite the fact that the real costs of the payments to the companies involved in PFI are starting to become clear, the pace of privatisation is actually accelerating.

In the leafy streets of outer South West London a cabal of pro-privateers are making up their own rules as they go along. In the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames primary care commissioning has already been hived of to a self-styled “co-operative” of local GP’s who include amongst their number a director of United Health.

Meanwhile, Kingston Hospital NHS Trust are cooking up a scheme to bring in a private sector company to run the whole elective surgery operation on their site. This would be a step beyond anything that’s happened before. The ISTC’s have been self-standing privatised units – Kingston are planning to bring the private sector right into the heart of an NHS hospital which would give the green light to similar moves up and down the country.

The Kingston situation exposed the sheer lack of any transparency and accountability in the development of key aspects of future health policy. Ask them who their approved bidders are to take over surgery and they will hide behind the cloak of “commercial confidentiality.”

Not only that, but in a press briefing they told us that their plans are fully in-line with the recommendations of Lord Darzi. I challenged some of the clinicians involved in the Darzi Review, who had gone to great lengths to tell me that they weren’t a Trojan horse for privatisation, what Kingston were saying. They were angry but they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do a damn thing to rein them in.

So the timing of Sicko is excellent and should be a wake up call to anyone committed to the principles of the NHS. Here’s the truth, the US corporations being lined up by Brown and Johnson to take over a GP centre near you are ideologically opposed to the principles of the NHS. They hate the concept of “socialised” health care and believe that it’s part of a red conspiracy and that’s why they have actively fought any attempts to sort out the poisonous chaos of US health care.

These same companies have form as long as your arm for denying care, price fixing and generally acting like some of the most evil scum ever to be spewed forth by the capitalist system – and Brown thinks that your healthcare is safe in their hands.

That’s why some Blairite tosser sitting in an office in Minneapolis has more influence over the future of your local health service than all the local people who use and work in those services put together. You are right to be very angry and very, very scared.

· It was an absolute pleasure to be invited along to join the Freemantle workers in Barnet on their day of action against their appalling treatment by their “third way” company.

What is all this bollocks about the “third sector” – all sounds to me like something out of a Sci-Fi movie or a Patrick Harrington version of fascism, or is that the “third position”? Whatever, they all make the same claim that they are some sort of alternative to socialism versus capitalism or public versus private.

But the Freemantle workers, and thousands of other care staff across the country, know the truth. The “third sector” is a cosy title for more cuts and privatisation and more of the same shitty end of the stick if you are a low paid carer. I know whose side I’m on.

REMEMBERING JOE #2

2007-11-27T03:08:00.000-08:00

CLASH CULTURE CHRISTMAS PARTY

Philosophy Football are holding a Clash Culture Christmas Party on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Joe Strummer's passing away FRIDAY 21 DECEMBER. And we've once again put together an amazing mix for the night. Headlining will be punk poet, Attila the Stockbroker. On the decks and filling the dancefloor The Clash's Tour DJ Scratchy supported by our in-house soundsystem MelstarsUK. Looking back on what the Clash meant to them, campaigning comedianm Mark Thomas, former Clash manager Caroline Coon with the author of the first book to champion the punk fanzine philosophy in football, Sing When You're Winning Steve Redhead with Fire Brigades Union National Officer John McGhee looking back at Joe's support for the striking firefighters in 2002. We're showing the Clash film The Last Night London Burned together with rare footage of Joe's final live performance. There will be a themed Clash food menu, and bar extension to midnight.

We've introduced a highly original voucher system to book a place. The voucher costs £2.95 each (plus a booking/p&p charge). Which you get back in full on the night as a discount on any Philosophy Football shirt bought on the night. After you've booked we'll even get in touch to see if there's a particular shirt you want to pre-order. So the night is effectively FREE and you get your late Christmas shopping done too!

As previously, our party is at Offside Bar, 271 City Road, London EC1, starts 7pm (food from 6pm). Book your ticket/vouchers at www.philosophyfootball.com (click on the 'events' button on the all products page) or call us on 020 8802 3499. If you want to book a table for 5 or more then call us and we'll sort out a group discount.

DO HURRY! We expect the night to be a sell-out.

www.philosophyfootball.com

REMEMBERING JOE #1

2007-11-27T03:06:00.000-08:00

ARTISTS TO MARK FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF JOE STRUMMER’S DEATH

Members of Primal Scream, Oasis, the Alabama 3, Carter USM, The Happy Mondays, The Smiths, Paul Weller’s band and legendary punk outfit The Members will come together in Brixton on the night of the 22nd December to mark the fifth anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death and to celebrate the Clash front man’s life and legacy.

The show at JAMM on Brixton Road – raising money for the Strummerville Foundation, Jail Guitar Doors and RAR08 – will also feature new bands The Mentalists and The Misfits with Jamie T and other special guests also expected to make an appearance on the night.

The Strummerville Collective will be coming together to perform some of the greatest Clash songs for what will be a unique rock and roll experience in memory of Joe. Mani from Primal Scream, Bonehead from Oasis, Bez from the Happy Mondays, Larry Love from the Alabama 3, Nigel Clarke from Dodgy and Alan White from Paul Weller’s band are all up for it.

Jim Bob from Carter USM will be putting in a solo set and JC and the Disciples will be bringing back memories of The Members from 1977 and the burning flame of Rock Against Racism.

Geoff Martin, Director of the Left Field Stage at Glastonbury Festival, said:

“We wanted to mark the fifth anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death with a unique event that marks the positive impact that his life had on so many of us. Brixton JAMM will be the place to be on the night of Saturday 22nd December.

Money raised will be shared by Strummerville – the Joe Strummer Foundation for new music – and RAR08 which will be fighting to stop the BNP in the run up to next May’s London elections. We also hope to make enough cash to put a bunch of guitars into Brixton prison as part of Billy Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors initiative in memory of Joe.”

LONDON CALLING – REMEMBERING JOE STRUMMER
Saturday 22nd December 2007 – 8pm to 2am
Brixton JAMM – 261 Brixton Road, London SW9 6LH
Tickets £8 in advance - £10 on the door.
www.brixtonjamm.org 0207 274 5537

STRUMMER AND THE FIREFIGHTERS

2007-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

MILITANT ENTERTAINMENT LTD
PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday 6th November 2007

Immediate Release

JOE STRUMMER FIREFIGHTERS SHOW – FIVE YEARS ON

A show to mark the fifth anniversary of Joe Strummer’s legendary benefit for the striking firefighters will hit the stage at Acton Town Hall next Thursday – 15th November.

Headlining is Billy Bragg, supported by long-time Strummer associate Tymon Dogg, tribute act Take The Fifth and with ex-Specials guvnor Jerry Dammers on the decks. Very special guests are also lined up for the night.

The show will raise money for Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors project – putting instruments into prison in memory of Joe – and the Strummerville foundation. It sold out in two hours when it went public earlier this year.

Five years ago Joe played for the FBU and was joined on stage for the first time in two decades by Clash guitarist Mick Jones in a night that has gone down in rock and roll folklore. A few weeks later Joe tragically died of a heart attack at the age of 51.

Co-promoter Geoff Martin from Militant Entertainment, said:

“This past few days we have all been reminded of the debt we owe our firefighters. Joe recognised that. On the 15th November we will re-raise the banner of solidarity above Acton Town Hall.”

SICKO COMPANIES AND THE NHS

2007-11-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

SICKO COMPANIES LINE UP TO TAKE OVER NEW NHS SURGICAL CENTRE

Campaigners warned today that the companies exposed in the new Michael Moore movie Sicko are being lined up to take over the NHS's newest surgical centre.

Just two weeks ago Health Secretary Alan Johnson opened the brand new surgical centre at Kingston Hospital in South West London. Pressure group Health Emergency can reveal today that managers at the Kingston Hospital Trust are finalising highly secretive plans that could see one of the big US private health corporations fingered in the movie Sicko taking over the management of the new centre.

The move by Kingston Hospital would be an unprecedented experiment in privatisation and would take the use of private companies deeper into the heart of the NHS than ever before. The Trust management are refusing to name the preferred companies on the grounds of "commercial confidentiality" but campaigners are warning that at least one of the US giants is likely to be in the frame.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said today:

" The Government are sitting back while hospital chiefs are working up plans that could bring the nightmare of Sicko right into the heart of our NHS.

Anyone who thought that the brakes had been slammed on to NHS privatisation should take a long hard look at what's going on behind closed doors at Kingston Hospital in south London today.

These faceless NHS bureaucrats should be stopped dead in their tracks before they wreck what's left of the NHS with their profit driven schemes."

Latest Briefing Column

2007-11-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Geoff Martin Column

I spent the best part of two days in Maidstone on Health Emergency business following the C Diff scandal. It was our outfit who blew the whistle on the fact that Chief Exec Rose Gibb had been bundled out of the door a couple of days before the Health Commission report hit the fan, with a big, fat six figure pay off. We forced Alan Johnson to intervene.

Maidstone was a scandal waiting to happen and the same poisonous cocktail of pressures could spark a similar disaster in any region of the country. This is the anatomy of a cross-infection scandal:

· Over two decades of privatisation of cleaning and hospital support services. Corners cut and pennies-pinched in the drive for profit. Cleaning, catering, portering and security seen as a soft touch for cuts. Jobs casualised and under-valued and staffing levels hacked back to the bare bones.

· Health care providers instructed to balance the books at any costs. NHS senior management over-populated by the same brand of self-seeking incompetents at the heart of the New Labour project. Budgets hacked back regardless on instruction of former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to save her job.

· PFI. Senior managers in the NHS obsessed and blinded by grandiose PFI projects and the racketeering Independent Sector Treatment Centres. These political fads drawing key management resources away from the sharp end of the service. The Director of Nursing at Maidstone had been seconded over to work on PFI while his staff were crying out for support.

· Management consultants ripping off millions from the NHS while nursing vacancies are frozen. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells were spending £3.5 million on management consultants while C Diff was ripping through their wards and 300 posts were axed and vacancies frozen. That money would have put more than a hundred extra nurses and support staff on the wards and probably would have been enough to contain the hospital acquired infections.

· The target culture. I’ve met too many managers who are nothing but bullshitters, lying through their teeth to hit phoney targets while the staff at the delivery end are run ragged.

· Bed occupancy at levels that make cleaning and hygiene virtually impossible. Patients are ghosted around hospitals in the early hours of the morning to meet admission targets with barely enough time to change the sheets let alone clean the beds and the surrounding area. Browns conference spin on deep cleaning is nothing more than a sick joke when there’s no spare capacity to decant patients into.

· Not a shred of local democracy and accountability. Individual Trusts are run as little more than local dictatorships by Boards of Directors answerable only to themselves. Since the abolition of CHC’s by New Labour in 2003 the last chance of holding executives to account was stripped away. The scrutiny committees at local authority level are miles out of their depth and, for the most part, useless.

· Staff morale has collapsed through the floor. Leadership is non-existent. The NHS has always depended on highly motivated staff but now bullying and the blame culture is rife. Senior management is remote and politicised as little more than a mouthpiece for central government. I rub up against these people, and their armies of spin doctors, all the time and they are a disgrace. They hate me and Health Emergency and frankly I am glad of that.

So pile all that together and you end up with the infectious time bomb of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and 90 dead bodies. There are hundreds more piled up in mortuaries up and down the country – many families never even see C Diff or MRSA on the death certificate because junior doctors are bullied by the target culture of inserting some other bogus cause.

This is the real world ten years into New Labour and yet the bed closures and service reductions are still rolling on from Swansea down to Sussex, through the North West and up into Scotland. We’ve demanded a moratorium on any further bed reductions, staffing cuts or service closures – join us in that campaign.

· I was hoping to be the first commentator to blow open the increasing resemblance between Brown and Richard Nixon but some sod nipped in before me in the Guardian letters page.

Check it out, the same heavy-jowelled, sweaty, evasiveness. Replace “There will be no cover up at the White House” with “The opinion polls had nothing to do with my decision not to hold an election.” Try it. It’s a CIA cloning experiment, I swear.

* And finally – check out Manu Chow’s new album Radiolina. A fantastic return to form from the champion of oppressed people’s around the globe. It’s now nearly five years since Joe died and we need the Manu Chow’s and Steve Earle’s more than we ever did.

Maidstone CDiff Scandal

2007-10-13T01:09:00.000-07:00

C DIFF/MRSA - CAMPAIGNERS CALL FOR END TO STAFF AND BED CUTS

Campaign group Health Emergency today set out and action plan for dealing with the root causes of MRSA and C DIFF in our hospitals in the wake of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells scandal:

* An immediate moratorium on the cuts-driven closure of beds and departments. In the past 18 months nearly 3000 front line beds have been closed across the NHS with many more in the pipeline. Bed occupancy rates are now at unsustainable levels with "hot bedding" rife.

* A review of staffing levels. 25,000 NHS jobs have been lost in the past 18 months with more planned. Hospitals are still using casual agency nursing staff as an alternative to maintaining their permanent staffing at viable levels.

* Removal of private sector companies from the provision of cleaning and other hospital support services. Cleaning has been seen as a soft touch for cuts in the NHS for more than two decades. We are now paying the price.

* An end to the target-led/bonus driven culture of NHS managment. Senior managers get bonuses for ticking boxes rather than delivering patient-led care. Patients are routinely shifted around beds in the early hours of the morning with no cleaning in between as bed capacity is juggled to hit targets.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said today:

"Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells was a scandal waiting to happen and I have no doubt that a similar disaster could break out in any region of the country at any time. The appalling backdrop to Maidstone still exists in far too many hospitals today through a combination of inept local management and central Government diktat.

Hot bedding is rife in the NHS because of a shortage of capacity. Staff barely have time to change sheets let alone clean around beds and yet the Government are driving further reductions in bed capacity to hit financial targets and meet their key objective of centralising services, That has to stop and it has to stop now. You cannot deep clean wards if you have no spare capacity to decant patients into and Gordon Brown needs to understand that.

For over two decades hospital cleaning has been seen as a soft touch for cuts and it still is. Cheapskate contractors, paying the lowest wages and cutting every possible corner, have created the conditions for MRSA and CDIff to get a grip on our wards.

Successive governments have turned our hsopitals into infectious time bombs. We would welcome corporate manslaugher proceedings against those found to be responsible but it should not stop at the hospital gates."

The latest privatisation rip off....

2007-09-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

£222 MILLION OF NHS CASH WASTED ON FAILED PRIVATE EXPERIMENT

Campaigners today called on the Government to slam the breaks on any further involvement of private companies in the provision of NHS services after it was revealed that £222 million of tax payers cash was overspent on private healthcare contracts last year for work that was never carried out.

The squandering of nearly a quarter of a billion of NHS cash for private sector work that was never done would have been enough to stave off many of the 25,000 job cuts in the health service over the past 18 months.

The wilful waste of precious NHS funds revolves around the use of Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTC's) - a New Labour initiative to hive off valuable NHS work to the private sector. Not only has the policy undermined NHS hospitals but it has handed the ISTC's gold-plated contracts which mean that even if they don't do the volume of work specified they still get paid in full.

The Government have been forced to admit today that the contracts with ISTC's - worth £1.4 billion - are running at 16% under capacity leaving £222 million of NHS funds being paid over to the private sector for nothing in return.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"These shocking figures will come as a kick in the teeth to health care staff who have had the threat of redundancy hanging over their heads as a result of the NHS cash crisis. At the same time the Government have been colluding with the private sector to pay over nearly a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers money for work that has never been done. This is a scandal of massive proportions and the politicians responsible must be called to account and the policy of farming out NHS work to the private sector must be stopped in its tracks."

Billy Bragg at Labour Conference

2007-09-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

and here's the hat trick of today's posts..

Want to catch Billy Bragg performing a gig for trade unions at the Labour Party Conference, and help raise money for Jail Guitar Doors?Fifty tickets at a special price of £10 each have been set aside for Bragg enthusiasts to see the show at The Landmarc in Exeter Road, Bournemouth, on 24 September 2007.Tickets will be provided strictly first come, first served - with a maximum of two tickets per applicant. To stake your claim, just email Geoff Martin geoff.martin@blueyonder.co.uk

Tickets must be picked up on the door between 7.30pm and 8.30pm and paid for in cash.The Proud To Be Unions/Hope Not Hate bash is promoted by the GMB, UNITE, UNISON and CWU trade unions - with money raised from this special release of tickets going to Billy's Jail Guitar Doors initiative to provide musical instruments for the rehabilitation of British prison inmates. One of the sought-after, customised Jail Guitar Doors acoustic guitars will be raffled on the night.The event runs from 7.30pm to 1am. Billy is due on stage at 11pm. Also on the bill are comedian Steve Gribben, and cajun/bluegrass band Flynt.

LONDON NHS DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN

2007-09-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

CAMPAIGNERS STEP UP FIGHT FOR DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF LONDON'S NHS

Pressure group London Health Emergency today stepped up the call for democratic control of health care strategy in the capital claiming that it is the only way that health chiefs can guarantee that Londoners have a real say on the future of services.

The Darzi Report into London's NHS makes great play of the need for public involvement but campaigners say that this is simply hot air when that involvement is conducted through bogus consultation exercises run by PR companies and through focus groups limited to a tiny number of Londoners.

In their response to the Darzi Report - The Critical Gaps which can be found at http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/ - London Health Emergency point out that Regional Government in Wales and Scotland has made a massive difference to health policy now that elected politicians have to account for their actions.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"It defies belief that in the year 2007 we still have a health care system in London that is wholly controlled by a network of highly-paid bureaucrats and quangos without a single shred of democratic accountability. Democtratic control of strategic health planning through the elected London Government structures is an idea whose time has come.

In Scotland, democracy has meant the abolition of charges to the elderly for continuing care and a freeze on the accident and emergency closure programme. In Wales it has meant the abolition of prescription charges. That's the power of the ballot box.

The absence of democracy in London's NHS makes a nonsense of the Darzi Reports claims on public involvement. You can't replace a vote in a ballot box with a focus group and still expect to be taken seriously."

BACK WITH A BANG

2007-09-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Yes I know, it's been ages but I have the perfect excuse having been tied up co-ordinating the Remploy national crusade against factory closures.

Anyway, back from TUC now and cranking up for the fight ahead.

While Brown was preaching pay restraint Channel Four were exposing the London Olympics gravy train and Princess Anne's £400 an hour for attending olympic committee meetings.

Princess Anne gets quarter of a million a year in State benefits from you and me through the Civil List.

If you're on State benefits like she is and took a job on the side for four quid an hour - let alone four hundred - you'd get hammered for doing the double.

Shall we all phone the benefits snoopers hotline and bubble the sour-faced old scrounger up?

I think so.

WE BLOW THE WHISTLE ON NEW NHS PRIVATISATION SCHEME

2007-08-11T02:47:00.001-07:00

KEY LONDON HOSPITAL MOVES TO PRIVATISE ALL ROUTINE ADMISSIONS

Pressure group London Health Emergency today called on Health Secretary Alan Johnson to intervene after they revealed that the Kingston Hospital NHS Trust is planning to privatise all of its planned surgical work - contrary to assurances from Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson that they are easing off the pace of private sector involvement in the NHS.

Documents obtained by London Health Emergency show that early next year Kingston Hospital in south west London plans to bring in a private company to carry out all it's elective surgery - an unprecedented experiment in NHS privatisation which would take commercial firms further deeper into the heart of the NHS than has ever been considered before.

Kingston Hospital also claim that their move is in line with the findings of Professor Ara Darzi's report into London's NHS even though Drazi made no reference to wholesale privatisation of elective surgery. LHE are seeking urgent talks with NHS London to clarify the position.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"The plans by Kingston Hospital to bring a commercial, profit-driven company right into the heart of the NHS to run all routine surgery is unprecedented and would give that company enormous leverage to launch a takeover bid to run the whole hospital. This is NHS privatisation on a scale we have never seen before.

It would appear that the Trust Board have cooked this plan up themselves and it will be a huge embarassment to the Government at a time when they are signalling that the pace of private companies involvement in the NHS is being pulled back. It will also be a shock to NHS London that Kingston Hospital are using the Darzi report as grounds to rush headlong into this privatisation experiment right at the sharp end of the service.

We are demanding the urgent intervention of Alan Johnson to block the privatisation plans at Kingston Hospital."

London NHS Plan - the real agenda exposed

2007-07-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

NHS LONDON PLAN - NINE HOSPITALS THREATENED WITH CLOSURE

Pressure group London Health Emergency warned today that the new NHS London blueprint for the capital - due to be unveiled tomorrow - will leave nine major acute hospitals facing closure or downgrading.

The units identified as under threat are:

* Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield
* Epsom and St Helier - both hospital sites threatened with downgrading
* Queen Mary's in Sidcup
* Central Middlesex in Park Royal
* King George's in Ilford
* Hammersmith Hospital
* One north London hospital to be identfied - possibly the Royal Free
* One west London hospital to be identified - possibly West Middlesex

Campaigners are predicting a new wave of public protest to the planned NHS London attack on services which will see accident and emergency, maternity and critical care centralised on a narrow range of favoured sites. Thousands are expected out on the streets once they know that their local hospital is in the frame for closure.

Geoff Martin, London Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

" This review of services by NHS London is a package of cash-led cuts to local services dressed up as a rational planning process. We have no obection to developing services but not at the expense of local accident and emergency and maternity units. If these plans are bundled through, Londoners can expect long journeys through the capitals busy streets in a blue light ambulance in order to access emergency care. The public know that it's those extra minutes in transit that threaten lives and that's why the oppose these cuts."

The Brakes Glasto and the perfect protest song

2007-07-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

In the search for the perfect political protest song I think I have cracked it.

Check this out by The Brakes who played the Left Field late night at Glasto

just 15 seconds long...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx_r2xmcKHI

the words in case you missed them...

"Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney - Stop being such a Dick"

brilliant

NHS PRIVATISATION VICTORY

2007-06-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hardly had time to wash the mud off and the balls already in the back of the net....

CAMPAIGNERS CLAIM MAJOR VICTORY OVER NHS PRIVATISATION

Pressure group Health Emergency today claimed a major scalp in the battle to stop the privatisation of hospital services in London with the news that the scheme to develop a network of private treatment centres across South London through Aussie company Clinicenta has been scrapped. The centre's would have been able to cherry-pick lucrative NHS work with guarenteed contracts from the Government.

A campaign against the scheme, driven by London Health Emergency and Keep Our NHS Public, had warned that the the proposed deal - worth £40 million a year to the private sector - would drain money away from NHS Trusts across the south of the London area who are already deep in the red. A number of Trusts, inlcluding the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, would have been staring bankruptcy in the face.

There are now rumours that Clinicenta will be compensated with a hand out of taxpayers money, a move that Health Emergency have vowed to fight.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"The Clinicenta deal would have been the biggest NHS privatisation project of it's kind and was shrouded in secrecy. Despite that, we have managed to kill it off and now that we've forced back the tide of NHS privatisation in south London we will be upping the fight across the rest of the country.

Ony two of the second wave Independent Sector Treatment Centre deals planned by the Government have been signed off and where they have been set up they have proved to be a costly and damaging disaster for local NHS hospitals. Gordon Brown is under massive pressure to halt the privatisation of the NHS and we now have the momentum to make that demand stick."

BACK FROM GLASTO

2007-06-27T02:54:00.001-07:00

After eight days in the field and a nightmare seven hour drive home I am back in sunny Sutton.

Everyone at Glastonbury spends a large chunk of their day talking about the toilets - there is an even bigger obsession with shit than you'd find at a Take That covention.

My thanks to Mark Perryman at Philosophy Football for sending me some clean shirts - check out his great new Clash items for Jail Guitar Doors at www.philosophyfootball.com

Glasto Left Field reports at www.leftfield.coop

I write this from the fields of Glastonbury – two days before the show.

There are ominous warnings of a storm blowing in – by the time you read this you’ll know whether the dire warnings came true and you may have seen me nude, in the mud wrestling with a man dressed as an emu. I truly hope not.

I arrive before a lot of the structure has gone in and well before most of the 175,000 punters and crew. Watching the site get built is quite something, and, as Tony Benn always says, it reinforces the belief that if we put our minds and energies too it there’s not much that we can’t achieve – if anything.

The Left Field stage, which I have run since 2002, is one of the most recent developments at Glastonbury and there is nothing else like it in the Labour movement. The range of sponsors, and the first class team who put it together, are developing a vehicle for promoting the values and campaigns of the socialist and trade movement which has captured the imagination of a growing audience.

But what it really reminds me of is just how little I have in common with the established political class.

What really rammed that home to me was an interview I saw with Ruth Kelly where she was bleating on about having exams in British culture and values for newly arrived migrants.

The idea of sharing a culture with Ruth Kelly, and those like her, just scares the life out of me. I’m an atheist a republican and a socialist and I’m dripping with the sweat of thirty years as a ska, punkabilly rebel and I’m an unrepentant member of the awkward quad who follows to the letter the old Strummer adage – “Question Authority”.

If I took an exam for entry in to Britain today I have no doubt that I’d be tossed off the boat before it hit Liverpool docks. My granddad made that journey from Kilkenny at the turn of the last century and nobody asked him what he thought of the royal family, Bobby Charlton and the Antiques Roadshow.

There’s something heavy duty fascist about this idea of a loyalty test before you can call yourself a citizen. With the identity card system you can see the apparatus of oppression and intrusion being assembled brick by brick. There will come a point in the not to distant future when we come to recognise just what this period of erosion of our civil liberties is really all about.

And that brings me back to Glastonbury. What the vast majority of people want is peace and the freedom to live and enjoy their lives without being arsed about by the state, their boss and the shadowy forces of global power. I really believe that. One of the reasons why so many people love Glastonbury is because you can do what you want to do, when you want to do it within reason without somebody sticking their nose in and demanding to know what you are up to.

And like I always tell people, the freedom that you’ve got left to do that is a freedom that was fought for. If it wasn’t for the trade union movement there wouldn’t be a Glastonbury weekend because there wouldn’t be a weekend and the right to paid time off from work.

Never does any harm to remind people of that.

My report from the field for Briefing below....

Briefing Column - DON'T BURN YER FINGERS1

2007-06-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

I want to start by congratulating everyone involved in John Mac’s leadership bid. Against a background of a hostile media, shoestring resources and impossible odds the campaign succeeded in galvanising the left in the unions, the Party and beyond in a way we haven’t seen for many years. It’s certainly dug a solid foundation for a revitalised left that we can build on for the future.

I’ve just been asked by a BBC reporter why John only got 29 nominations. It really is dead simple. Part of the New Labour project was to gut the Parliamentary Labour Party of dissenting voices. Every winnable seat that’s come up for reselection – with a handful of exceptions – has seen another lump of Blairite voting fodder parachuted in to join the ranks of nodding donkeys on the Government benches. So you raise the bar of nominations to a level that you know is unattainable and hey presto you end up with good old fashioned Albanian democracy.

Don’t for a moment entertain this bollocks that Brown would have welcomed a challenge from the Left – utter garbage. The last thing that Brown wanted was six weeks of touring the country with John Mac in hot pursuit justifying to critical audiences of Party members and trade unionists his support for PFI and tax loopholes for the super rich, his support for the Iraq War and Trident and his repeated kicks in the teeth for public sector works.

No, Gordon wants the soft-soap on the sofa with Richard and Judy and other heavyweight interrogators as his minders try and repackage him as a cross between as one of those odd looking tartan clad dolls with plastic bagpipes that you often see at motorway service stations and Alled Jones.

But I tell you what’s really glaring in all of this and that’s how you end up with a no-contest for leader at a time when the Special One (Brown in this case, not Jose) is so far at odds with mainstream Labour movement opinion on the big domestic and international issues of the day.

Brown said is his acceptance speech that his top priority is the NHS. Really? I look forward to hearing him try and spin that to the health care workers who are getting a staged pay increase of just 1.9% AS A DIRECT RESULT OF HIS PERSONAL INTERVENTION IN THE PAY REVIEW BODIES – what a fucking nerve!

He is also the gung-ho PFI merchant who has piloted a bonkers system of money laundering for the private sector that has turned the Russian Mafia green with envy and which will see £45 billion of taxpayers money levered out of NHS budgets over the next 30 years and straight into the pockets of the PFI consortia without even touching the sides – that’s neo-classical endogenous Brownism for you in all it’s glory.

Don’t even get me started on his support for the continuing tax loopholes that enable the global super rich and the private equity scammers to treat the UK economy, and the British workforce, as some sort of state-sponsored Get-Rich-Quick scheme. No wonder he was personally phoning potential McDonnell backers to heavy them back into line rather than have all this gear laid bare from Lands End to John O Groats.

I read somewhere that some people don’t trust Gordon Brown because he’s Scottish. I don’t know about that. I don’t trust him because he colluded with Blair over the illegal invasion of Iraq and because he’s the architect of all the worst excesses of the pro-market, pro-big business, anti-public sector worker stuff we’ve been force fed over the past ten years.

Mind you, I have to say that my own personal attempts to lever MP’s votes John’s way were spectacularly unsuccessful. After a few too many Guinesses I spied Tommy Watson across a crowded bar at a leaving do. I homed in on him and in a reckless move offered to bake him a bread pudding if he nominated John Mac. I know what I did was wrong, and probably illegal, but surprisingly he didn’t bite and counter-offered me a ticket to the FA Trophy Final to see his beloved Kidderminter Harriers. I refused and I am delighted to report that they lost to Stevenage Borough.

And so I write this column on the eve of the Cup Final. Yes I have a ticket and yes I will be joining the mass ranks of Chelsea revolutionaries in the rebellion against capitalist greed by refusing to pay five quid for a burger. Mass movements of the people have to start somewhere….

Hasta La Victoria!

Left Field line up announced

2007-06-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

LINE UP ANNOUNCED FOR UNION LEFT FIELD STAGE AT GLASTO

The Left Field stage at Glastonbury, the area of the festival run by the trade unions to promote the global fight for economic and social justice, today announced it’s line up for 2007 and promised a blistering four days of music, comedy, debate, film and campaigning from it’s new, giant two stage venue with a covered capacity of 5000.

Kicking off on the Thursday, the Left Field will bring the anti-slavery movement to the heart of Glastonbury with a night hosted by the legendary Don Letts and his Dub Cartel with the Beat and Damien Dempsey headlining.
On the Friday a Latin American Fiesta will bring the street music of Venezuela to Worthy Farm and in the evening Jim Bob from Carter USM, CUD and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin will work up a sweat in support of the housing charity Shelter.

On the Saturday, two young Polish bands will be flying in to put a rock and roll edge on the campaign to recruit migrant workers. Mark Steel will lead off the afternoon and in the evening the stage is handed over to the anti-fascist campaigners from Love Music Hate Racism with Lethal Bizzle, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Natty and a very special headline guest.

Come Sunday, Tony Benn and Mark Thomas are back at the Left Field along with environmental campaigner George Monbiot to raise the slogan – Another World is Possible. Left Field troubadours Glenn Tilbrook and Billy Bragg will bring the curtain down on another year of celebration of the campaigning spirit that’s at the heart of Glastonbury.

Geoff Martin, Left Field Director, said:

“The Left Field nails the lie that young people aren’t interested in politics or the campaigning agenda of the trade union movement. We will be bringing Carlos Lozarro over from Colombia – a guy who has survived repeated assassination attempts by the right wing death squads. What over festival would bring the hard realities of the global struggle for economic and social justice right to the heart of the event other than Glastonbury?”

Geoff Sez - Back the Wembley Burger Boycott!!!!

2007-05-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

Even on cup final day at the new Wembley on saturday I'll still be fighting the fight against corporate greed by supporting the "Burger Boycott" launched by rank and file Chelsea fans....

Fans plan Wembley food boycott

By Alex Ali
Comment

Programmes could cost up to £10

Fans travelling to the FA cup final have pledged to boycott food and beverages at Wembley Stadium because of sky high prices.
Chelsea and Manchester United fans could end up paying as much as £8 for a burger meal and £10 for a programme at next Saturday's match.
Supporters are angry at the price of the programme, the merchandise and the refreshments at Wembley Stadium.
Kelvin Barker, one of the fans who spearheaded the Chelsea end of the Wembley boycott, told BBC London 94.9FM: "We probably could have swallowed the ticket prices.
"Because it is the FA Cup final and everybody wants to be there you expect to pay way over the odds to go to a cup final.
"But when you get another slap in the face when you find that you are having to pay £8 for a burger meal and I believe in the region of £10 for a programme we are unhappy about that really and we think that something needs to be done."
Fans handed out thousands of flyers asking supporters to join in with the boycott at both Chelsea and Manchester United's games on Sunday May 13.
Fans are also angry at the lack of tickets for the Chelsea v Manchester United Cup final at Wembley Stadium on Saturday, May 19. Only 25,000 tickets have been allocated to supporters on each side and that means that 40,000 tickets are available to other fans and corporate representatives associated with wembley Stadium.
Fans have paid from between £35 to £95 for tickets to see the most important cup game in English football return to Wembley.

MORE NHS FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT

2007-05-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest from the health front.

CASH-STRAPPED HOSPITAL BLOWS £18,000 ON ARTY PHOTO'S

A cash-strapped south London hospital, where nurses have been threatened with redundancy, has spent £18,000 on photographs of its buildings to brighten up the walls of its new, privately financed wing.

In a leaked email between senior managers, which has been passed to pressure group London Health Emergency, it is confirmed that the Trust has set up an "Arts Group" of senior managers including a "Photographic Commission". That group has agreed to spend £18,000 on photographs of its buildings which will come straight out of the patient care budget.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Kingston Hospital has been facing a multi-million pound debt over the past year and nurses and other staff have been warned that they could face redundancy. To be blowing the best part of 20 grand on arty snaps of their building against that background is a disgrace.

This "art commission" would have kept a key member of staff in work for a year and I wonder what senior managers think they are doing sitiing around discussing the artistic merit of a bunch of poncy photo's when they should be getting on with running the hospital."

Briefing column - unvarnished and in the raw!

2007-04-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Geoff Martin Column

Not a week goes by these days without someone reminding me of an important anniversary of some event that left a mark either on my life or on the long history of the labour movement. This column is being written a couple of days before the 30th anniversary of the UK release of the first Clash album – “The Clash”.

I know, I know – you’ve heard me bang on before about how that event, courtesy of the US imperialists at CBS records, turned my life, and the life of thousands of others like me, on it’s head but I’m not going to apologise for revisiting the arrival in the shops of that slab of black, twelve inch vinyl three decades ago.

From the opening drum attack of Janie Jones through to the closing bars of Garageland “The Clash” is a record so in tune with its time back in 77 that I can’t listen to it now without being whizzed back to the afternoon I hijacked my sisters record player to give it a first spin. I actually find it impossible to calculate how much I owe to the release of that record.

Police and Thieves turned me on to reggae and, at a time when punk appeared ambivalent to fascism, sent out a message to us young, white wannabe punks that a line was being drawn in the sand. Any misunderstandings we may have had about what White Riot was all about were blown away. And we got turned on to Rock Against Racism and never turned back.

And now another anniversary. This November it will be five years since Joe Strummer trod the boards at Acton Town Hall in support of the striking firefighters. Joe was joined on stage by Mick Jones for the first time in nearly 20 years on a night that is now up there on the scoreboard of rock and roll legend. Just a few weeks later Joe was dead. Five years, can you believe that?

To mark the event, the FBU and a former firefighter Mark Bedford, have organised a fifth anniversary gig at Acton Town Hall on the 15th November headlined by Billy Bragg with support from Tymon Dogg, the guy who taught Joe how to play guitar. DJ on the night will be Jerry Dammers from the Specials.

A chunk of the proceeds from the show will go to Billy’s new campaign Jail Guitar Doors, an initiative supported by the POA which is putting instruments into prisons in memory of Joe Strummer. Tickets will fly so get in early…..

Talking of hot tickets I am looking forward to the trip to Wembley for the first FA Cup final at the new stadium. Of course, I was there for the last one as well when we left with smiles on our faces even after paying the ferryman a pretty penny to get us across the legendary piss lake outside the bogs on the lower level.

I understand that the GMB members have built us a stadium which is actually fit for modern purposes, with the appropriate plumbing, and I will of course report back in due course but I think I’ll give the £8.50 fish and chips a wide berth.

That all leads me very nicely onto Russian mineral assets, energy suppliers and general all round dodgyness. Apparently Gazprom, the Russian gas outfit, are bidding to take over the power supplies to the NHS.

Is this a good thing? Will any of the profits that they are looking to cream off find their way into Frank Lampards pay packet? Is the growing political hoo-hah in the former Soviet Union a stable platform from which to tie up the energy requirements of the life or death services in your local hospital? Important questions, I am sure you will agree.

I will, of course, be making enquiries of a few friendly Stalinists of my aquaintance who know about all things Russian but in the meantime my advice would be not to touch it with a barge pole and to stick with our own home-grown, unionised energy companies.

I read with interest the reports from Spurs fans of their experiences in Seville. A few years back I went to Zaragoza for a Cup Winners Cup game. Following an afternoon drinking with the locals in a back street bar we headed up to the main square and as kick off approached the Guarda Civil moved in and the batten charges began. Inside the ground we pulled up the bucket seats and wore them on our heads as the long battens were flailed from the tier above us.

To me, that’s what an away game in most parts of Europe had become. Things had improved a bit when I went to Barcelona couple of year back but you could still sense the underlying tension and edginess in the air. I don’t know what the answer is – the reputation of British football fans abroad still sets the tone in many European town and cities – but it’s clearly not just a British problem as events in Rome with Man Utd prove conclusively.

Elsewhere on my schedule the plans for this years Left Field at Glastonbury are pretty much bolted down and it’s going to be a ripper. If you’re coming down to Worthy Farm at the end of June drop by and see us. You’ll get a warm welcome.

With a tip of the pork pie hat to that whole retro 70’s, Life on Mars vibe we will have Eric Faulkner from the Bay City Rollers opening up for Tony Benn on the Sunday afternoon. Eric was a teenage pop star in the early 1970’s when Tony was a Minister in a Labour Government. Eric is also a top bloke, dead proud of his trade union roots and was blown away at the idea of working with Tony Benn.

A rendition of Bye Bye Baby for Tony Blair is on the cards.

The next few weeks is going to be one of those pivotal times in the Labour Movement. Up your efforts to get John Mac on the ballot and watch out for fireworks from the Blairite Ultras as they move to carve up Brown….there’s a lot more left in this contest than the press would have us believe.

STRUMMER/FBU SHOW - ARMS ALOFT IN ACTON TOWN!

2007-04-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

BENEFIT CONCERT LAUNCHED TO MARK LEGENDARY JOE STRUMMER FIREFIGHTER SHOW

Tickets go on sale today (Monday 16th April) for a benefit concert in November that will mark the fifth anniversary of the legendary show that Joe Strummer performed at Acton Town Hall in 2002 as a fundraiser for striking firefighters, just weeks before his untimely death.

The show, "Arms Aloft in Acton Town", on Thursday 15th November 2007, will be headlined by life-long Clash fan and political campaigner Billy Bragg. Former Clash members Mick Jones and Topper Headon have confirmed that they will be at the show as have members of Hard Fi who have picked up the baton from the Clash and brought the spirit of Joe Strummer to a new generation. Jerry Dammers from the Specials will be the DJ on the night and the support act is Tymon Dogg - the guy who taught Joe how to play guitar.

A chunk of the proceeds from the show will go to a new campaign "Jail Guitar Doors" which has been launched by Billy Bragg to put instruments into prisons up and down the country in memory of Joe Strummer.

Billy said: " Hearing the Clash as a 19 year old had changed my life, so I guess I was looking for a project that underscored the transformative power of music. Inspiration arrived in the shape of a letter from Malcolm Dudley, a drug and alcohol counsellor working at HMP Guy's Marsh near Shaftesbury in Dorset." The result is Jail Guitar Doors and the campaign is gaining support right across the UK.

The show is backed by the Fire Brigades Union and by the Left Field Stage at Glastonbury Festival.

Geoff Martin, Director of the Glastonbury Left Field, said: "I was the compere at the Acton Joe Strummer show for the FBU five years ago. It was an incredible night with Joe and Mick Jones joinging forces on stage for the first time in nearly 20 years. The shock news of Joe's death just a few weeks later came as a real blow to all of us fighting for social justice but this show give us a chance to come together and recharge the batteries."

Tickets for the show at £17.50 and £12.50 concessions can be ordered on the hotline number 0207 737 0199.

Building up for Glastonbury Left Field

2007-04-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

The pace is fast and furious as me and the team build up for the Glastonbury Left Field later on in June.

Full line up details due over the next couple of weeks but we couldn't resist marking the end of Life on Mars with our own retro 70's experience that will bring together Bay City Roller Eric Faulkner and our good friend and comrade Tony Benn.

BAY CITY ROLLER TO OPEN FOR TONY BENN AT GLASTONBURY

Former Bay City Roller Eric Faulkner will open a session with veteran Labour politician Tony Benn on sunday afternoon at this years Glastonbury Festival under the banner "Another World is Possible".

Eric Faulkner comes from a solid trade union background and his dad was a shop steward for the GMB union. He will be playing songs from the trade union movement with a few Rollers numbers thrown in before Benn takes to the stage for his traditional sunday session in front of a packed house of 5000 at the Left Field.

The Left Field stage is promoted by the Battersea and Wandsworth TUC who own the Workers Beer Company. It has grown from a beer tent to the biggest covered stage on the Glastonbury site with a capacity of 5000. The promoters are promising a stunning international line up this year in support of the global fight for economic and social justice.

Geoff Martin, Left Field Director, said:

"Eric Faulkner is a top bloke and dead proud of his union roots and he was blown away when we suggested he open for Tony Benn at Glastonbury.

It's been suggested that there's a touch of Life on Mars about this connection - Eric was a teenage star in the 70's when Tony Benn was a Labour Minister.

One things for sure - they'll have a packed house at this years Glastonbury under the banner "Another World is Possible" and watch out for a rendition of Bye Bye Baby specially for Tony Blair."

Auschwitz - Berkenau

2007-03-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

They say that nothing can prepare you for a visit to Auschwitz/Berkenau, the concentration camp and death camp built by the Nazis near Krakow just inside the Polish border.

I was invited on a trip by the Holocaust Educational Trust. They were aware of my work with Billy Bragg and the Hope Not Hate outfit and my work at the Left Field.

So, along with over 200 students, teachers, journalists and campaigners we assembled at check in desk 32 at Luton Airport on a cold March morning at 5am for a trip into the poisoned heart of fascism.

Landing at Krakow it was sub-zero and snowing and we boarded our coaches for Auschwitz. The original concentration camp, Aushwitz One, held political prisoners, trade unionists and religious leaders who the Nazis suspected would be the core of any resistance movement in occupied Poland. The camp, converted from old Polish army barrack blocks, also housed Russian prisoners of war.

We stepped through the entry gates with the “Arbeit Mach Frei” (Work makes us Free) slogan that I had seen so many times in books and on the television. We saw the torture cells where prisoners were punished by starvation until death, we also saw the last messages that had been scratched into the walls and I felt a real sense of fear. My wife and I are trade unionists and socialists – in Poland in 1940 people like us were tortured and died here for their beliefs.

Soon Auschwitz became the centre of the Final Solution – the plan to systematically murder and wipe out the Jewish people from fascist occupied Europe. The Holocaust. We saw the first gas chamber. We saw piles of luggage clothing and ordinary personal goods taken from families before they were killed. And we saw the piles of hair shaved from the victims to make textiles. On one of the piles was a plait shaved from the head of a young girl and still tied with a faded blue ribbon. I have daughters, they wear plaits and I felt physically sick.

But Aushcwitz One wasn’t big enough for the murder on an industrial scale demanded by Nazis so across town the slave labour built a new facility designed for extermination – Berkenau.

When we arrived there it was still snowing but it was low cloud and misty as well. From the tower above the gates where the trains brought in the victims in sealed cattle trucks the camp stretches out for what feels like miles, rows and rows of barrack blocks – some intact and some just brick ruins.

We saw inside a barrack. A wooden hut initially designed for 50 horses but where up to 1000 people selected to be worked and starved to death rather than face immediate extermination in the gas chambers were housed in unimaginable conditions. I saw inside a block where kids had been housed and where some mothers had scratched cartoon figures into bed boards to try and brighten the short, painful, terrified lives of their kids.

And we walked the walk from the landing platform where the women and children were separated from the men on their final journey to the gas chambers and we saw the bombed out remains of the chambers and the crematoria. As it was getting dark I walked on my own back along those railway tracks, past the rows of electrified barbed wire, under the yellow arc lights to the outside world. I knew all about the Nazis and the holocaust. I’d read the books and seen the TV programmes but in a few hours I realised that I really knew very little. I had to see with my own eyes to understand.

But the point of the trip is that I know now. And I know even better why it is so important that we challenge, fascism, racism and intolerance today. I’ll never forget what I saw at Auschwitz – Berkenau and that short, sharp lesson from history is now a part of me and who I am and will live me forever.

March Briefing Column - Unplugged

2007-03-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

At one of the March 3rd NHS protests a hospital porter pitched up at the gates with his own handmade placard scrawled on a piece of cardboard ripped from the side of a box – the message, hacked out in biro, was simple, “Nurses not Nukes”.

For me it was another one of those “Life on Mars” type flashbacks – this time a spin back to the early eighties when the Thatcher government was tearing lumps out of the NHS while pressing on with the dumping of cruise missiles at Greenham Common and other US air bases.

Of course it’s not only nurses taking a hammering in this years pay round – the rest of the healthcare team are being expected to take a pay cut, civil servants are facing a future of job losses and privatisation and I’ll bet you that local government staff will be next on the block.

All this pay restraint is at the demand of the bankers who decide economic policy. The same bankers who are lifting tens of billions in profits and bonuses for themselves that make Michael Ballack look like a case for the Low Pay Commission.

As Labour’s poll rating drops through the floor quicker than West Ham dropping out of the Premiership you can feel the mood of anger and betrayal amongst those core Labour voters who stuck with the Party through thick and thin and who were the springboard for the election victory in 97. Squandering that political capital, while sucking up to the rich and sleazy, nails the Big Lie about New Labour’s highly-tuned political antennae – they were just a bunch of chancers who happened to be in the right place at the right time and history will bear that out.

Sticking on the football theme, and obviously not including West Ham in that genre of sporting achievement, someone asked me the other day what I thought about this idea of Premiership footballers donating a days pay to help out the poor nurses.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Passing round the hat at the Funky Buddah to prop up the NHS is one of the maddest publicity stunts I have ever come across. If you want to get money out of rich footballers for health care staff then jack up the rate of tax and while we’re at it levy a windfall on the banks and we could all have access to the best public services on the planet without having to ask Teddy Sherringham to raid his beer money.

But then I did think that it Frankie Lampard wants to make a personal donation to the nurse in our household then a couple of tickets to the Champions League final in Athens in May would certainly help to keep the wolf from the door. Cheers Frank, send them on via LLB once we’ve got past Valencia and the Scousers.

Hold your nose – we are heading deep into the sewer here. Two words – Alan Milburn. Yes, despite promises that he was off to spend more time with his ego, his sunbed and his family, the man who unleashed the market chaos that is currently ripping through the NHS is attempting to make a come back.

Let’s get this into perspective. When Frank Dobson was running the health service he embarked on an ambitious programme to dismantle the Tories market-based system. What happens? Milburn swans in, turns the apparatus on it’s head and, at huge expense, reintroduces the market with a vengeance and the legacy of that wasteful, divisive and privatised model of care is what’s hammering services up and down the country today.

Vanity exercises from yesterday’s men, who don’t have the bottle to put up or shut up, ain’t worth the time of day and the BBC, and Newsnight in particular, should be ashamed of themselves for giving this stunt precious airtime when there’s so much important stuff happening out in the real world.

By the time you read this Mr Plod may well have completed his inquiries and the meat wagon could be pulling away from Downing Street on it’s way down to West End Central. Who knows.

But this much is for sure – there has to be a serious debate across the whole breadth of the Labour and Trade Union movement as to how we move forwards and put the dangerous experiment of new Labour back in it’s box.

That debate can only make lasting sense if it impacts on the succession. That’s why I support John McDonnell. On the key issues from Private Equity to public sector pay to Trident and the lasting misery of the Bush/Blair war – John represents mainstream Labour Movement opinion. That’s why it is so important that what John has to say gets a fair and open hearing.

A Brown coronation would be an unmitigated disaster and many Labour MP’s privately acknowledge that. So let’s have a genuine clash of ideas. Get John on the ballot paper.

Camapign against Corporate Welfare

2007-03-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Why not join the campaign against corporate welfare?

There are scum bags moving seemlessly between management consultancy and government - scamming millions out of the taxpayer.

Will you help us stop these scroungers?

more below from the HE nerve centre......

CAMPAIGNERS SLAM 23% GROWTH IN PROFITS FOR MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS MILKING THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Pressure group Health Emergency today slammed figures that show the UK's management consultants have recorded a massive growth in profits of 23% on the latest reported annual accountants, much of which has been milked out of the Government's "reforms" of the NHS and the rest of the public sector.

The profit growth, reported in todays "Consultant-News", confirms the fears of campaigners and health unions that millions of pounds that could be going into patient care is instead being used to bolster the profits of the big management consultancy outfits.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said today:

"Wherever there's a financial problem in the NHS, "turnaround teams", loaded up with management consultants on £1200 a day plus VAT and expenses, are swung in to recommend sacking front line staff, removing light bulbs, cutting cleaning frequencies and closing beds. It's a scandal that the public services are being used to make a fast buck by teams of axe-wielding management consultants who walk away from the wreckage with a fat fee in their back pockets."

Milburn and Clarke - the Ego's have landed

2007-03-05T10:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterdays Men - one of Madnesses finest tunes and now the theme for the goon show that is Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke.

If you saw this pair on Newsnight you'd have to wonder if Paxman had had his drink spiked. He let them off the hook swifter than the West Ham back four.

This is truly the revenge of the gutless and the ego-driven who believe that the private sector are the only show in town.

I thought Milburn had gone off to spend more time with his family. Clearly, they have had a gutful of him and who can blame them?

More on this in next months Briefing.

February Briefing Column In the Raw

2007-02-20T05:20:00.000-08:00

What is it with this government and gambling? Closing hospitals and building casinos has to be up there with the incineration of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis on the great totaliser of the Blairite legacy.

Yes, you can have a punt whether you like it or not. The lucky ones will still have a hospital accident and emergency close to home but if fortune isn’t smiling you could be jammed up in the traffic on the way to one of Hewitt’s SupaCentres while the life drains out of you.

Tesco’s, having mopped up just about everything else on the High Street other than the binge-drinking and glass-in-the-face emporiums of the big pub chains, are now moving in on GP services. And in this age of multi-skilling why not have your minor-surgery done by the kid from the meat counter when the queue for bacon has died down?

Someone tried to tell me that Manchester was getting the UK’s first super-casino, but you, me and the Mirror pensioners know that’s bollocks.

The super-casino in the Square Mile of the City of London has been running for donkeys years and every day is jackpot day as the scum from the cesspit of British capitalism rake off eight billion in bonuses for selling on PFI debts for fat profits that will bankrupt the NHS and for scimming the dwindling pension funds of those who put faith in the greedy and crooked.

-

At 11.30 one January night an email dropped through from a contact in Kent. Sometimes I feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck and I’m transported back to my days as an angry young man in the porters mess at the Royal Marsden – this was one of those occasions. The email was a leak from the management at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust asking staff to donate a days free work to help bail out their deficit and prop up their ailing PFI scheme.

I might not have benefited from a university education but I know how to put the boot in – within 24 hours this scandal was front-page national news and the Government and the health authorities were on the rack

Get this straight, the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has splashed out hundreds of thousands on management consultants in recent years, it’s Chief Executive is on a pay package worth £150k and here they were calling on their nurses and other members of the health care team to prop up the fat profits of the speculators behind a PFI scheme by working for nothing.

-

Don’t forget that Gordon Brown is Mr PFI and unleashed this free for all. And I think the newly rebranded Gordy should make the most of it.

Here’s the pitch – Red Box Day. Similar to Red Nose Day, but instead of sitting in baths of baked beans to raise money for the needy of African villages all public sector staff do a days work for free to help out the needy – like Gordon and Patricia – of the Westminster village. I ran this idea past Mark Serwotka and he was strangely unimpressed.

I was with Mark at his unions Westminster rally on their national strike day and was pleased to be there. I was more than happy to point out that if the government want to take on the wasters and the lazy bastards in the public services they should swing the axe at Price Waterhouse, KPMG and McKinseys and the rest of the “management consultants” who have bled £3 billion from the public purse to finance their lavish lifestyles – not the low paid worker fighting to maintain a decent service in your local benefits office while the redundancy axe hangs over their head.

It’s the management consultants and PFI racketeers who are the real scroungers bleeding the taxpayer dry – we need to blow that scandal wide open and wind it up in every pub, caff, bingo hall, bus queue and super-casino in the country.

-

Watch out for a new campaign that I’m involved with called Jail Guitar Doors. A project that will put guitars and other instruments into prisons in memory of Joe Strummer.

Billy Bragg will be fronting it up and the POA and others are on board. This is a practical action designed to give prisoners a chance to learn how to play an instrument and to benefit from the positive experience that can come with it. More later.

FORGET THE BRITS - HERE COME THE STINGIES

2007-02-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

Awards are ten a penny these days - but we had no choice this week but to finger the meanest hospital in Britain. It was a tough call. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells were in with a strong shout - we have rumbled the hypocrisy of their Chief Exec this weekend yet again for jetting off on hols after telling staff to cancel theirs - but Epsom and St Helier have snatched it.

Never mind taking out every other lightbulb - what about taking out every other management consultant, literally.

BRITAIN'S MEANEST HOSPITAL

Campaigners today branded the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust as the "meanest hospital in Britain" after news broke that NHS bosses had instructed staff to remove lightbulbs in a bid to save cash.

The Trust, facing a combined cash deficit of over £24 million is also planning to axe nearly 500 staff and to close nearly a quarter of it's beds.

In the past few months the Trust has also:

* Axed hot lunches for patients, including the elderly, offering them a sandwich instead

* Told staff in non-clinical areas to do their own cleaning

* Cut cleaning frequencies at weekends even though the Trust has a serious C DIff and MRSA problem.

* Stopped issuing nighties and pyjamas to patients - even those rushed into hospital as emergency cases

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Epsom and St Helier is the meanest hospital in Britain and is an example of everything that's wrong in the Patricia Hewitts NHS.

Staff morale is at rock bottom and the Trust is being run by management consultants getting paid a fat fee for dreaming up the most outrageous pennu-pinching cuts. Is this what Tony Blair means by "modernising health care"?.

BLAIR HITS MAD MAX MODE

2007-02-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

Today Blair said that his reforms/privatisation of public services should go "further and faster".

Clearly, he is now in Mad Max mode - ripping up everything he can, including the evidence, and leaving it strewn across the highway for someone else to clear up.

Tessa Jowell makes for a poor alternative to Tina Turner.

So, todays news is more maternity closures and NHS chiefs caught out fiddling the accident and emergency waiting times.

Here's what the Health Emergency public affairs department had to say:

FRONT LINE STAFF UNDER PRESSURE TO FIDDLE ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY FIGURES

Pressure group Health Emergency have today backed suggestions by leading academics that front line staff in accident and emergency departments are coming under pressure from managers to rig accident and emergency waiting times in order to comply with Government targets.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Today's report comes as no surprise to me. I've spoken to front-line staff who have come under massive pressure from managers to fiddle figures to fit government targets and I suspect that the practice is rife. Senior managers who don't hit the targets won't get their annual bonus so they have a financial interest in ticking the right boxes.

With beds being axed across the NHS it is becoming increasingly difficult to admit patients through accident and emergency and it's that capacity issue which is impacting on the four hour waiting target. More beds are being cut this year so the problem of long waits in accident and emergency will get worse and that will mean more management pressure on staff to massage the figures."

Work for nothing you lazy bastards...

2007-01-26T06:07:00.000-08:00

Here's todays latest from the Health Emergency nerve centre. Sometimes a story like this drops in late at night and I can feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck and I feel the same anger that forced me to join the fightback from the Royal Marsden Porters Lodge 25 years ago. If you lose that anger they may as well shoot you....

BANKRUPT NHS TRUST ASKS STAFF TO WORK UNPAID TO FUND PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT

NHS pressure group Health Emergency revealed today that the cash-strapped Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent are calling on nurses and other members of the health care team to "donate" a days unpaid work to help finance a new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) development.

An internal memo - attached - passed to Health Emergency sets out the dire financial position facing the Trust and appeals to staff to give a days work for free to help bail out the Private Finance Initiative.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"This slaps the nut on the government's health care policy. Nurses and other members of the healthcare team are called on to work for nothing so that speculators and banks can cream off another fat profit from an NHS PFI scheme. This is Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to fill the pockets of the rich and it's happening right under the noses of a Labour Government who are ripping the heart out of the NHS."

Latest Briefing Column - live and dangerous

2007-01-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest Briefing column

Of course I missed the latest on the Ruth Kelly/Gay Priests hoo hah but I'm praying for all your souls every night.....

This is the problem with the Christmas/New Year shut down. LLB takes a month off and by the time I get back the old bollocks from New Labour is piled higher than Nicholas Soames plate at a help-yourself buffet.

Hazel Blears kept me busy over Christmas when we blew apart the story that she had broken with cabinet protocol and joined protests in her constituency against her own governments hospital cuts and closures policies.

Once again we had to witness the squirming and wriggling of a Blairite caught bang to rights. The dogs in the streets of Salford know that if it’s wrong to close a maternity unit in their back yard then it’s wrong for the rest of the country. Unfortunatley Hazel Blears finds it a bit more difficult to grasp this very basic concept of consistency – or does she?

If she does then she’s in good company as Health Emergency’s assessment of the national picture shows that up to 15 members of the government – ranging from the PPS’s at the bottom the greasy pole right up to the Cabinet table – have opposed NHS cuts in their localities. Never underestimate the power of self-interest when it comes to dealing with the political classes. There’s very few of them who want to give up the kudos, easy life and gold plated pension and return to life in the real world.

But I tell you what all of this proves, it proves that up and down the country the fight against NHS cuts and closures is winning, and that nails the lie of New Labour invincibility fair and square and should encourage more people to get stuck in.

Across the UK, strategic reviews of hospital services that were due to report on closure and downgrading targets by the end of last year have been effectively derailed or delayed in the teeth of fierce local opposition. The government’s NHS “Heat Map” has come back to haunt them as tens of thousands of people suddenly realised that the New Labour strategists are terrified of public pressure. As soon as the heat map surfaced the only game in town was to turn up the temperature to boiling point and that’s exactly what we have done.

In some areas we have used the little-known statutory powers of the local authority Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s to pull in planned cuts and closures for full review, upping the political temperature and dragging the Secretary of State for Health Centre stage and putting central government at the heart of the row. The latest example of this tactic working is in Kent where the O&S Committee have vetoed plans to axe the A&E department at Maidstone Hospital, scuppering the timetable laid out by the Strategic Health Authority and giving campaigners space to keep the fight going.

In Warwickshire the whole plan to hack back services at Warwick Hospital has been binned after mass public protests. Others are expected to follow suit as the political realities sink in for the Government.

The window of opportunity for the Government to bundle through their hospital closure programme was always limited and is getting narrower as each day goes by. We knew that if we could delay the plans that Hewitt would run out of road. That’s exactly what has happened.

Getting through to the new year was crucial. The government will not want to be embroiled in a raft of NHS rows up and down the country in the run up to the May local elections and the Brownites have cast a wary eye over the running sore that could be opened up over the summer.

Even John “I know nothing” Reid has been on the protest lines at his local Monklands Hospital in Airdrie although we’ve yet to see Ruth Kelly fighting for better sexual health services and I tend to doubt that we will.

So there you have it. Real campaigning progress has been made and it’s a credit to those thousands of health workers and NHS supporters that we’ve held back the tide of cuts that the government were preparing. It’s no wonder that their cheerleaders at the IPPR are sick as dogs and keep bleating on about the need for “reform”. The battle is by no means over yet but this is deffo one that we’re winning.

Campaign launched for moratorium on NHS cuts

2007-01-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Campaign launched for moratorium on NHS cuts

Despite increased funding, the NHS is making swingeing cuts across the country, with proposed closures to units and to thousands of jobs and beds.
In conjunction with Health Emergency, John McDonnell MP has launched the ‘Campaign for a Moratorium on Health Service Cuts’, which will be formally launched with a public meeting at the House of Commons on Tuesday 27th February (details below).
John McDonnell MP , who is a candidate for the Labour leadership when Blair steps down, said:
"The current wave of cuts to NHS services are now having a critical effect upon A&E units, maternity and mental health services, across the country. Unless the Government listens now to the growing anger and dismay within our communities and amongst health service staff we will face electoral disaster in the local elcetions in May."
“I am calling for an immediate moratorium to the programme of cuts and closures and an independent review of the NHS funding model so that we have a chance to fully re-evaluate the Government’s health service policy, and ensure that these policies do not cost lives.”
Geoff Martin, Head of Campaigns at Health Emergency, said:
“Today’s survey by the British Medical Association exposes the dire consequences of the Government’s cuts and closures policy to healthcare services.
“With John McDonnell’s motion calling for a moratorium, we now have a real opportunity to build public and trade union support for a concrete demand that will put the Government right on the spot.”

-The official launch takes place at 7pm on Tuesday 27th February 2007 in the Wilson Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons. Further speakers will be confirmed soon.
Details of the BMA survey released today can be found at: http://www.bma.org.uk/pressrel.nsf/wlu/SGOY-6XHNR2?OpenDocument&vw=wfmms

John McDonnell has tabled EDM 655 ‘Moratorium on NHS Service Reductions and Closures’. The text of the motion is copied below:

That this House notes with concern the current proposals for reductions in NHS hospital beds and NHS staff and the threats of closure of accident and emergency departments, maternity units and mental health services which are being brought forward across the country and which are causing instability, uncertainty and damage to staff morale and undermining confidence in the community; and calls on the Government to introduce a moratorium on the implementation of these proposals pending an independent review of the NHS funding model, the outsourcing of services and the long-term strategy for critical care services, engaging with frontline healthcare staff, patients groups and local communities.

Campaigners winning hospital fight

2007-01-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

With estimates now showing that up to 15 members of the government are fighting their own hospital cuts policies in their own back yards, and with the political timetable slipping away, it is clear that local campaigners are winning the battle for the NHS.

Who said campaigning doesn't work?

Here's today's bulletin from the Health Emergency nerve centre.......

NHS campaign group Health Emergency said today that campaigners are winning the fight against the axing of services by delaying and disrupting plans and by turning each threatened closure into a major political battle.

At the weekend it emerged that 13 members of Tony Blair's government have been forced, through local pressure, to join the fight against NHS cuts and closures in their constitiuencies.

Meanwhile, campaigners are using the statutory powers of local authority Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee's to pull in closure plans and refer them directly to the Secretary of State for Health - upping the political temperature. In the latest example of the power of this tactic, the Kent O&S Committee pulled in plans to close A&E at Maidstone Hospital at their meeting on Friday last week.

Up and down the country, strategic reviews of services that were slated to report by the end of last year have been derailed and disrupted in the teeth of local opposition. It is these "Fit for the Future" reviews that are supposed to identify the 69 acute hospitals set up for closure or downgrading of maternity and accident and emergency services.

The political timetable for pushing on with the closure plans is now running away from the government. Campaigners believe that New Labour strategists will not want to be unveiling a raft of hospital cuts in the run up to the local elections in May and that Gordon Brown would not want to take over in Downing Street with the running sore of accident and emergency closures dominating the domestic political agenda.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"There is no doubt that local campaigns against hospital closures are winning the fight. The window of opportunity for the government to press on with their NHS closure plans is narrowing by the day.

The fact that 13 members of the Blair government have been dragged into the trenches by local pressure proves just what a political timebomb closing hospitals is for any party. As soon as we knew that the government had a secret heat map of NHS protest areas we knew that this was a fight that could be won through old-fashioned political pressure.

The battle isn't over yet but the power of local campaigning has proved that real politics is alive and kicking and I think the Government and their cheerleaders have been shocked by that. The IPPR must be sick as a dog."

Blairite stooges at it again

2007-01-07T09:58:00.000-08:00

Just to liven up a wet sunday in January the Blairite goon-squad which is the IPPR have been at it again - pushing the case for axing thousands of hospital beds and closing dozens of hospitals.

Here's the Health Emergency response - we'll take on Hewitt's Glee Club anytime, any place, anywhere and that's a promise.......

Pressure group Health Emergency this morning hit back at claims by New Labour think tank that thousands of hospital beds across the UK could be safely closed down in the name of improving efficiency.

Health Emergency research has shown that nearly 3000 hospital beds were closed in 2006 with thousands more facing the axe this year as hospitals come under central government pressure to balance the books.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Let's be clear, the IPPR are outriders for New Labour and what they are proposing today is likely to become government policy tomorrow. The hospitals bed closures carnage in the NHS has already been allowed to rip with thousands more beds facing the axe in the run up to the end of the financial year. In many areas of the country services are already dangerously short of capacity and any extra pressure from flu or a cold snap would tip them on to red alert with disastrous consequences.

The IPPR have got the brass neck to slag off those campaigns up and down the country who have had the guts to stand up and fight for their local hospital services and against the sacking of NHS staff. Their patronising claim that our efforts are detrimental to the NHS turns logic on it's head and will simply spur thousands more on to join the fight for the future of the NHS."

We expose New Labour hypocrisy over hospital closures

2006-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

Here it is - the release this morning that blew wide open the government's hypocrisy over hospital closures......

Health campaigners today blasted cabinet minister Hazel Blears for "rank hypocisy" after she joined protesters fighting the closure of the maternity unit at Hope Hospital in her Salford constituency - one of 29 acute hospitals facing closure or downgrading up and down the country as a direct result of central government policy.

Blears - Labour Party Chairwoman - was involved earlier this year in the infamous "NHS Heat Map" briefing with Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt where the political fall out of the cuts and closure programme in Labour-held seats was assessed.

Back in the spring Dr John Reid joined protesters outside the gates of Monklands Hospital in his Airdrie constituency opposing the closure of the A&E department.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"Here we have cabinet ministers, totally bound up in the Government's hospital cuts and closure programme, riding on the backs of anti-cuts campaigns in their own constituencies in a bid to save their own political skins. Frankly, it stinks.

There are 29 hospitals up and down the country facing the immediate threat of cuts and closure to key services in 2007. Will Hazel Blears be joining demonstrators on the streets in each of those areas or is this just a classic case of "not in my back yard"? If the closure of maternity services is wrong in Salford it is wong in all those other parts of the country as well and Blears should be piling on pressure to ditch the cuts policy or she sould resign."

Hope Not Hate - done and dusted til 07

2006-12-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

The southern leg of the tour was brilliant.

Great link up with the Remploy campaigners in Bristol and the Peugeot guys in Birmingham.

Steve and Louie from Night of Treason came down to Brighton and it all went a bit hazy in the early hours.

Serious work on Left Field 07 starts now and loads to do on the NHS as well.

Keep the faith and keep fighting on.

Back on the road with Billy Bragg

2006-12-09T02:08:00.000-08:00

I'm back home for a short mid-tour break on Billy Bragg's Hope Not Hate #2 blast around the country.

On the first leg Holmfirth was amazing - it's in West Yorkshire and where they film Last of the Summer Wine.

When we rolled in from York we realised it was more like Last of the Summer Wino. It was saturday night and pretty much the whole crowd was pissed. The venue, an old picture house, was falling apart at the seems which added to the rough and ready vibe.

Billy pulled out all the stops and gave it the full-on, one-man-Clash assault and went down a storm. What a night!

The BNP had been sniffing around earlier but left when Bren and Dave - two old rockers who follow Bill around - told them their fortune.

Great show in Burnley the following night and Glasgow was tasty as well - lovely crowd singing along to New England in broad Glaswegian accents.

Back off again next week for the southern leg. If you're coming along buy me a Guiness and say hello.

We challenge the government over cash led NHS closures

2006-12-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

Campaign group Health Emergency today challenged the Government to identify a single one of the 29 major acute hospitals facing early closure or downgrading where the axing of key services isn't being driven by a major deficit in the local NHS budget.

The challenge has come the day after Tony Blair and the New Labour think-tank the IPPR claimed that the closure of A&E, maternity, intensive care and trauma services at local hospitals was about long-term planning and not money. Health Emergency are counter-claiming that every single one of the current threatened casualty and maternity closures being resisted by local communities is being cash-led.

Geoff Martin, Health Emergency Head of Campaigns, said:

"For the government to claim that the current wave of service closures and job losses ripping thorugh the NHS this winter isn't being driven by a cash crisis is ridiculous. The planned cuts to casualty services across the country, that will be finalised in the new year, have nothing to do with modern, rational planning of health services and everything to do with simple, old-fashioned cuts."

Health Emergency also hit back at claims by the IPPR that local campaigns to fight A&E closures will leave a thousand patients dead on the streets:

"The IPPR are nothing more than cheer-leaders for the New Labour government. Their attempt to smear and insult the tens of thousands of nurses, NHS support staff and members of the public who are out on the streets in their tens of thousands every weekend fighting for their local hospitals is a disgrace and will simply spur more people on to join the campaigns to save A&E and maternity services."

latest release on Militant Entertainment

2006-11-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

All-girl indie quirk-rockers, The Mentalists release their first Single “Don’t know what to do with you” on Militant Entertainment, the new independent label borne from the Leftfield stage at the Glastonbury festival, to support the Love Music Hate Racism campaign.
The band - who have supported Love Music Hate Racism in schools and at many LMHR events over the past year including the massive Trafalgar Square carnival, will be playing alongside Babyshambles at the LMHR Fabric fundraiser on Thursday November 30th.
The Mentalists are a progressive band who use music to promote issues such as social justice and anti-racism, and they aim to encourage positive ideas about the role of women in music, and the role of music in tackling issues various issues in today’s society.

The single is available on Limited Edition Pink Vinyl and CD Single, featuring a remix version by Statik, another big LMHR supporter. The single is also available to download from iTunes, Napster, HMV, Virgin, Tesco’s and Woolies from the 20th November.
To pre-order The Mentalists Don't Know What To Do With You please visit www.thementalists.co.uk

Briefing Column - uncensored and in the raw

2006-11-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

As you read this I have lost count of the number of MP’s who have decided to climb on the publicity gravy train and have a pop at the Labour deputy leadership. With the honourable exception of Jon Cruddas it looks to me for all the world like some kind of “I’m a careerist – get me on Newsnight” reality show. Celebrity Big Brother without even the slightest whiff of celebrity.

Who knows – maybe Carol Thatcher will win? She obviously uses the same tanning salon as Peter Hain – “The future’s bright – the deputy leader is orange.” There you go Peter, there’s your slogan and it’s a freebie.

But it’s all a side show from the main event and that’s the increasingly bizarre and ranting behaviour of the PM. Anyone who saw the exchange with Adam Bolton over Saddam and the death penalty could see that this is a man who needs help but when two of your closest advisors are David Blunkett and Alistair Cambell what hope has the poor bloke got?

The irony of a New Labour government closing down psychiatric beds when they are carrying more fruitcakes than the bakers van won’t be lost on the campaigners fighting to save the 24 hour emergency crisis centre at the Maudsley Hospital in south London.

Anyway, the Republican’s PR stunt of bringing forward Saddam’s death penalty in a last ditch bid to prop up their vote didn’t seem to work although, to be honest, I have no idea how the American political system operates. From what I can make out the Democrats ran ultra-conservative candidates in the marginal states. Yes, people even more right wing than David Blunkett.

The only common factor seemed to be that they were, more or less, opposed to the continuation of the Iraq occupation although most of them supported Rumsfeld and the war when it kicked off. So Blair is left to contort himself through a whole political Kama Sutra of obscene positions as he tries to adapt to the fact that his master in the White House is on a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

And the killing continues. Blair and cabinet members parade around with their red poppies commemorating the dead of previous wars while sending more and more working class British soldiers to their deaths in the heat of Iraq and Afghanistan. You can smell the stench of hypocrisy all the way from the Cenitaph to the killing fields of Basra.

My dad was a soldier. A proud man who was beaten and starved close to death on the tracks of Death Railway. He’s made it through to his 87th birthday but still feels that raw anger and contempt when he sees gutless politicians like Blair and Geoff Hoon sending men and women into battles that they would never dream of fighting themselves.

The battle for NHS rages on. The Government have owned up that despite axing nearly 22,000 health worker jobs and closing 2,500 beds so far this year the NHS deficit is still £1.2 billion – money that has to be saved in another round of panic cuts and jobs carnage over the busy winter months

Remember that figure - £1.2 billion is what it would take to call off the cuts in services in your local hospitals and across the rest of the country. Here’s another number - £8.8 billion, the amount that will be paid out in city bonuses to the same speculators who are trousering hundreds of millions of pounds of NHS cash refinancing debts on hospital PFI schemes. Debts that we will be paying for till we drop.

The Tories, the mugs who invented PFI before Gordon Brown decided he would do it even bigger and better, have produced figures which show that £8 billion of PFI hospital’s will actually cost us £53 billion to finance over the length of the contracts. That’s £45 billion in interest payments to the financiers. No wonder they are laughing all the way to the trough.

Up in Wigan the JJB strikers deserve all the support and help they can get. One of the local GMB officials told me that they work in what he described as a first world sweat shop.

Scabs are being bussed in as another bunch of greedy bastards drive a coach and horses through the promised land of the “Warwick Agreement”. But this is new Labour’s “flexible Labour Market” in action – hardworking men and women ground down by cheapskate employers who take advantage of every legal loophole to give their staff a kicking.

What a proud legacy for the Blairites.

Meanwhile some other bunch of spivs can set up what is little more than a glorified long firm to make a fat profit out of the Christmas savings of some of the lowest paid in our society and then walk away scot free when the racket comes tumbling down.

It then turns out that. in a classic example of how the filthiest scum always rises to the top of the barrel, the Chairman of Farepak is Clive – “Unions are vermin” – Thompson the man from Rentokil for whom exploiting the low paid comes as naturally as taking a shit

But rather than legislating to outlaw such a blatant rip off, or moving to bang up those responsible for wrecking Christmas for thousands of working class families, Gordon Brown tells us we should all give up a days pay for the victims while the company directors head off home to their multi-million pound houses!

What a fucking arsehole. He makes Graham Poll looks sensible. That’s yet another good reason to vote McDonnell.

Geoff Martin - The Biog

2006-11-23T09:05:00.000-08:00

I had to write this for a newspaper piece - here's the story so far for the record

Geoff Martin was born in Epsom in 1962. The son of a former soldier who later took a desk job at the MoD and a nursery assistant, the Martin family had gravitated out from Stepney, via the LCC estate in Morden to the Surrey suburbs.

Martin left school at 16 and worked as an electricians mate whilst thrashing a telecaster around the London pub and club circuit by night with political post-punk agitators Secret's Now!.

A football injury on Wandsworth Common led to Martin getting sacked from his job on the building trade "lump." Under pressure from the dole he took a job as a porter at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey. Within weeks he was the porters shop steward and in 1982 was elected as NUPE Branch Secretary at the age of 21 - the youngest in the country.

Leading a militant branch of health workers was the start of a political and industrial adventure that had already been fired up by Rock Against Racism and the Clash. He cites the Clash first album and the RAR carnival in Vicy Park in 78 as the turning points in his life.

In 84 Martin was headhunted to lead health campaigning by GLC-funded outfit London Health Emergency. The Telecaster was stuck in the cupboard.

2 years later Martin was elected as a Labour Councillor in Merton where he served for eight years. When Labour took power in the Borough is 1990 he served briefly as Chair of Finance before being scaked for refusing to send the bailifs in to collect the Poll Tax from pensioners. He later bullied the Labour Group into allowing him to run the Direct Labour Organisation where he successfully brought the refuse collection and street sweeping back in house on union terms and conditions.

In 1992 he stood as Labour Parliamentary Candidate in Sutton and Cheam - losing to Lady Olga Maitland.

A commentator on politics, the NHS, racism and popular culture in the media Martin set up and still runs the highly successful Left Field stage at the Glastonbury Festival. Now set up as a freelance events, campaigns and publicity operator Martin also looks after the Hope Not Hate anti-racist coalition instigated by his comrade Billy Bragg and co-owns the country's only socilalist record lable - Militant Entertainment.

A hard core Clash Man, Martin works with the Strummerville organisation to keep the spirit of Joe alive as well as RAR successor Love Music Hate Racism. He listens to loads of old ska, rockabilly, blue grass, blues and reggae and follows Chelsea Football Club in an interesting clash of ideologies.

Married to Helen, an ITU nurse, with two daughters, he lives in Sutton where he still plays punk rock electric guitar infused with the spirit of Hank Williams, Leadbelly, the Skatalites and the Ruts.

He reckons Mark Lamaars Radio 2 show is the dogs bollocks and cites his mates Bob Crow at the RMT and comedian Mark Steel as people who help keep him on the path to righteousness. His dads experience as a survivor of Death Railway in the second world war is a touchstone for his utter contempt for the rich and priviledged and those who weald power without responsibility.

I ain't got no yard...no ID card

2006-11-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

The great UK Subs had a song called I Live In A Car which included the lyrics - "I Ain't Got No Yard - No ID card - Cos I Live in a Car"

I thought of Charlie Harper and his band when I heard Mitcham MP Siobahn McDonagh on the wireless telling us we had nothing to fear from a lurch down the road to old-style Albanian democracy with an ID card for all.

Course not. For a start it will put the old union blacklisters out of busines as every militant, peace-nik and alll round awkward bastard will be on 24/7 electronic surveilance.

Man, this is heavy, heavy stuff. I tell you first ID cards - then martial law. Follows like night follows day and all in the name of peace and security.

I ain't having one are you?

Let's all Go Underground and fuck up the plans of McDonagh and her spooks.

Vets, pets and the NHS

2006-11-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

The week started with news that Ipswich Hospital is planning to treat pets in the radiotherapy suite at the weekend.

So take your place behind Roland Rat and Lassie and just hope that that Pit Bull eyeing you up hasn't been rolling in shit before they dragged him in to have his bollox scanned.

Worst news is that this is a reciprocal arrangement and that spare vets capacity will be used on tuesday nights for NHS patients.

I'm waiting for a hernia repair and am bricking it that with my reputation amonst NHS managers I'll be one of the first dragged onto a table where they'll jam a thermometer up my arse before lopping my goolies off.

Ooh Matron....

Government launches assault on NHS staff

2006-10-28T11:36:00.001-07:00

You'll see in tomorrows sundays that Lord Warner is trying to play down health service job cuts but we've got in early and have slammed the government for deliberately setting out to insult NHS staff over the 21,000 jobs that have been deleted across the country since February this year and for failing to understand the impact that blanket recruitment freezes are having on front-line patient care.

Health Emergency, which keeps a running dossier of the axed NHS posts, are pointing at three recent examples of where the job reduction programmes have hit front line services:

* St George's Hospital Tooting - Five neo-natal intensive care cots left moth-balled as the Trust cannot afford to recruit specialist nurses to run them. The Trust is looking to cut £29 million.

* The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead - 480 posts deleted leaving staff so short on the wards that they don't have time to assist elderly patients with their meals, running the risk of malnutrition. The Trust is cutting £25 million this year.

* Epsom and St Helier Trust - Staff in non-clinical areas told to do their own cleaning so that the number of cleaners can be reduced. Risk of MRSA, C Diff and other superbugs breeding in non-clinical areas and being spread to the wards. The Truts is cutting £24 million over the next 18 months

In the latest wave of job losses this week 95 staff at Kingston Hospital in Surrey, including nurses and consultants, were warned to expect to receive redundancy notices on the 11th December - two weeks before Christmas.

It's easy for Tony Blair and his health ministers to be cavalier about the job losses in the NHS because it's not their livelihoods on the block. It's not just about compulsary redundancies. Many Trusts across the country have blanket recruitment freezes in place and are deleting vacant posts. That means not enough staff are left to run key services with dire consequences for patient care.

The government seem determined to provoke and insult over a million health care staff who are trying to hold the service together in the teeth of cuts, privatisation and mis-management and waste of resources which goes right to the top of the Department of Health. It's no wonder they are angry.

October Briefing Column

2006-10-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

Geoff Martin Column

This weekend thousands more people joined the national fightback against the government's cuts programme for the NHS. They know that the planned axing of front line services has nothing to do with a rational planning process and everything to do with hacking back the NHS budget.

Further demonstrations are planned up and down the country over the coming weeks and as it becomes clearer where the cuts targets are we will be turning up the heat. I’ve warned before that the anger at NHS cuts could become New Labour's poll tax and the government would be well advised to back off on the closure programme or risk electoral meltdown.

In our area of south London two new private treatment centres supported by a network of eight clinics are being planned with the sole intention of bleeding money away from the NHS and destabilising hospitals across the area from Guys out to Woolwich down into Surrey and across to West London.

Although tens of thousands are pounding the streets every weekend I still don’t think that the vast majority have sussed the full package of cuts and privatisation that New Labour are preparing to unleash and when they do you watch the slow grinding realisation amongst Labour MP’s that this issue will see them seeking proper jobs after the next election. That’s why we’re jacking up the pressure now because we know what a powerful tool self-serving political expediency is when it comes to New Labour.

Talking of proper jobs I can’t let the Sion Simon video moment pass without comment. I’ve got no problem watching my political enemies sawing through the branch they are sitting on and if they want to post the political equivalent of snuff movies on YouTube that’s down to them. But that bloody hair cut!

It’s one thing offending the wife of the Tory Leader but it’s another offending the rest of us by parading around looking like a roadie for the Sweet circa 1972.

And if health and the public services is going to be the big political domestic issue as the electoral body clock ticks down we all know what the Daddy-O is on the international front.

I am personally delighted that Iraq and the associated adventures are back on the front pages and you could do nothing other than admire the brass neck of Blair when he claimed that he agreed with every word when Colonel Mustard told him that he was a clueless tosser up to his neck in the blood and guts of British squaddies and Iraqi civilians.

Like any protracted issue there’s always a danger that it just runs out of steam and car bomb after car bomb and body bag after body bag no longer register with the media or the public. That, of course, is just what the politicians hope will happen. They hope that people will become either bored or immune.

Well that hope died the day that the General stuck the boot in. And I tell you this, the weakness of this ramshackle government was exposed to the bone when they were unable to do a damn thing to stop a geezer who is nothing more than a senior civil servant, a paid government official, from kicking them in the political goolies. Any confident administration would have sacked him on the spot rather than weakly accepting what was little more than a military PR coup on the airwaves.

And the other important factor? That John McDonnell broke through the news embargo that has hampered his leadership campaign and was given the airspace and column inches to speak on behalf of the vast majority of the Labour Movement and the wider Labour-voting public on this crucial issue. Don’t underestimate what a boost that will be for John’s campaign.

According to Blunkett, Brown was lukewarm on supporting the Iraq War but he didn’t have the backbone to stand up to Blair. Along with the being the architect of PFI and the rest of the public service privatisation plans Brown will be judged on his gutless performance over an illegal war. No wonder he looks worried.

Special Care Baby Cots Left Idle as Staff Cuts Hit NHS Services

2006-10-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

Reports in Sunday's Observer that five special care baby cots at St George's Hospital in Tooting have been left idle because the Trust cannot afford to staff them have nailed the government lie that the staffing cuts in the NHS are having no impact on patient care.

Last week Tony Blair attempted to play down the staff cuts in the NHS claiming that only a "few hundred" had been made compulsarily redundant. However, the deleting of over 20,000 posts has forced many Trusts, including St George's, to freeze or restrict recruitment with dire consequences for front line services.

St George's is trying to claw back a £29 million deficit this year, one of the biggest in the country. As a result of the mothballing of the five neo-natal intensive care costs dozens of premature babies have been turned away with parents forced to see emergency care miles away from home.

Tony Blair's shoddy attempt to play down the staffing cuts in the NHS have come back and slapped in the face with the news that it's the recruitment freeze that has hit premature baby care in south London and has left five intensive care cots mothballed.

NHS Trusts across the country are imposing blanket recruitment bans as they try and claw back over a billion pounds worth of debt. These cuts, imposed by central government, are hitting real life or death services and it's Tony Blair and New Labour who will be called to account by an angry public.

Blair's kick in the teeth for NHS staff

2006-10-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair's attempt to play down the jobs carnage in the NHS is a kick in the teeth for thousands of NHS workers up and down the country waiting to find out if they are next on the cuts hit list.

It's no wonder that health workers are so angry when the see the Prime Minister deliberately misleading the country on the real impact on the wards of new Labour health policy.

Of course Blair can be cavalier about job losses in the NHS - it's not his livelihood on the line and when he eventually packs it in as PM he's got millions of dollars to lever out of the US lecture circuit.

The head of the NHS doesn't even know how many jobs have been cut - what a sick joke. Will NHS staff ever forgive the Labour Party for this insult - not if Browns the next leader.

Taking the NHS Fight to New Labour

2006-10-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

Here's me and Tel and Fred from Clause IV just before we got our collars felt at last years Labour Conference

Another weekend, more NHS protests

2006-10-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

This weekend thousands more people joined the national fightback against the government's cuts programme for the NHS. They know that the planned axing of front line services has nothing to do with a rational planning process and everything to do with hacking back the NHS budget.

Further demonstrations are planned up and down the country over the coming weeks and as it becomes clearer where the cuts targets are we will be turning up the heat. We've warned before that the anger at NHS cuts could become New Labour's poll tax and the government would be well advised to back off on the closure programme or risk electoral meltdown.

Don't buy this stuff about the cuts all being in Tory areas. It's crap. Marginal seats like Hastings, Crawley and Brighton in the south are hit hard and there'll be many more across the country when the full toll of the cuts hits home. Meanwhile, more private treatment centres are planned.

Join the resistance.

Vote Sandanista

2006-10-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

Looks close between the CIA stooge and the Sandanista's in Nicaragua

can you imagine what Joe would have made of it?

here's hoping Ortega pulls it off this time

he's living proof of the old adage that if you sit by the banks of the river long enough eventually you'll see the bodies of your enemies floating past

Reagan's already way down stream

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie........

Cameron and the NHS - brass neck or what

2006-10-05T01:09:00.000-07:00

David Cameron - ten out of ten for sheer brass neck trying to portray his party as the saviours of the NHS.

Are people's memories that short? I don't know.

What I do know is that it's new Labour health policies which have enabled him to march onto this territory.

Tens of thousands are on the march and hundreds of thousands of core Labour voters have deserted the party over this issue and Hewitt and her team of ultra-lightweights just keep blundering on with more cuts and more privatisation.

We'll come back to this issue over the coming weeks as the protest movements grow.

British Soldiers Paying The Price

2006-10-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Today's Indy on Sunday is quality.

When Blair was grandstanding in Manchester soldiers lives were on the line in yet another ill-conceived adventure in Afghanistan

How they must have laughed when they saw John Reid - who said that they'd be home without a shot being fired - being touted as a future PM.

Reid is like so many other self-styled Hard Men, he get's someone else to do the fighting for him. I call that cowardice.

Strangeways Here We Come

2006-09-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

Off to Manchester tomorrow for a hit and run at the Labour Conference

I'm doing the Briefing Fringe on health and one of my main themes will be the BNP moving in to exploit local health campaigns

And so what do the Labour Government do? Close the A&E at Burnley General. Another sure fire vote winner for the fascists.

By the way - anyone referred to this column from this months briefing will be interested to know that my best gag - which involved Blair, Blue Peter and a pile of elephant shit - was edited out.

Geoff Martin - so hard line and so risky he gets censored by Labour Briefing......

Logistics Picket Line

2006-09-22T12:48:00.001-07:00

So I pointed the truck down the M20 late last night and was more than pleased to see a good turnout on the Maidstone NHS Logistics picket line

Even better was to see a proper picket line in action doing the hard work of explaining the case to fellow workers and turning a fair few back

With my new Johnny Clash persona I was dressed all in black and nearly got run over in the dark

If only I could get one of those Alex Ferguson glow-in-the-dark comedy noses I'd be sorted

Support the NHS Logistics workers

Logistics Picket Line

2006-09-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

John Reid - Hypocrite or Stalinist Hero? You decide

2006-09-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we nail John Reid as a hypocrite

A man who supports campaigners fighting the closure of the casualty hospital in his constituency but who backs Hewitt's plans to do the same thing to 60 hospitals in England. Nice work Uncle John

and one of those English A&E's closing? Burnley General. Another New Labour vote winner for the BNP

Birthday bonus

2006-09-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

For my birthday this year i got a Chelsea victory and a Man Utd defeat which was great - that and a gallon of Guinness down the Alex was all I could have asked for.

I was also deighted to see on the box that Alex Ferguson had dressed up for the occasion with his matching tie and nose set in bright purple. Thanks you old bastard - I laughed my new socks off.

Now it's back to the battle for the NHS and I'll be on the Logistics picket line thursday night and will report live and direct from the front line.

Government caught rigging hospital closures

2006-09-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Government clearly in panic mode as the penny drops that core labour supporters are deserting in droves over the health cuts policy.

The real impact of the reviews to services that will close up to 60 critical care units kick in just before next years local, scottish and welsh elections - meltdown is inevitable

is that why I'm now getting Labour MP's ringing me asking how they can stop the rot? You bet it is

Forget heat maps - this will be the big domestic political issue for the forseable

The end of Blairism

2006-09-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

What a day!

We all new that the implosion of the sordid world of Blairism would be messy but this is something else

I went on Jeremy Vine at lunchtime to stick my boot in for what is worth only find that Tommy Watson already had his footprints all over the PM's genitals. Now that did surprise me.

The unions and the left will never have a better chance to seize the policy agenda in the vacuum left by the turf war between Brown and Blair and that's exactly what John McDonnell is doing.

Get in there!!!!

2006-09-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

Back on the health beat

More cuts and closures announced in the NHS today

More jobs on the line and the only looming redundancy in the headlines is Blair's

The opinion polls show that core labour voters - public sector workers and people who use those services - have had a gutfull and aren't prepared to support this Government in any way, shape or form.

When the Tories overtake Labour in approval ratings on health you know your dead meat and that's why the rats are biting at the Captain's arse - the survival instincts of New Labour MP's who love the easy life will do for Tony Baloney.

2006-09-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Look out for the next release on Militant Entertainment coming soon from the Mentalists......

Previous releases from Neck and Teasing Lulu are still available.

Militant Entertainment will also be working with top players from within the music indusry to launch the "Young People Need Unions" campaign later this year.

2006-09-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well comrades

here it is - the revolution starts now as Steve Earle once wisely predicted

this Blog will update you on my work with Health Emergeny, the Left Field, Militant Entertainment and much more as well - I hope!

Let's see how we go.....

Geoff