So we’re waiting to know if the UCU’s higher education committee has decided to call off the action or not. It’s been a tense couple of weeks – the “EPF” came out with its super-extreme and deeply dodgy plans, the UCU rolled out, the universities threatened a variety of draconian punishments, and then they began…
Read More Waiting for #defenduss…The sheer mendacity of the USS management, or rather, the Employers’ Pension Forum, has been breathtaking. The outrage ought to be greater. Dennis Leach of Warwick is doing a great job calling out the bullshit. For example, the EPF’s Q&A document supposedly explaining changes to the scheme gave the increase in life expectancy since 1974…
Read More a brief collection of the EPF’s lies on #ussWhy are a lot of professors going on strike? Or rather, on a marking boycott? The answer ought to worry anyone who is a member of a pension scheme, of any kind, in the UK. To start with, we’ve got the USS, the pension fund for the universities as they were before 1992. All the…
Read More #solidarity with the UCU: if you have a pension you want to read thisIt’s time to review this post on the implementation of the Tories’ Health & Social Care Act in my local area. The news is, I think, good. The local rag: The Haringey branch of national pressure group 38 Degrees is only the third in the country to get all its suggested amendments on buying health…
Read More Fixed in placeOK, so this is the extended 12″ jacking tech-house hot wax remix of the piece at Liberal Conspiracy. It’s October, 2013. As unseasonable snowfall turns the streets into a fairy wonderland and the transport system into a Pratchettesque mess, police are herding the last holdouts out of the Elthorne Estate in London, N19. Homeless shelters…
Read More The Simple Plan: The Definitive StatementThe Daily Mirror mocks Lord Freud’s overhoused condition and quotes Owen Jones: We’re told this is about bringing down the £21billion housing benefit bill. But we’d save much more if we stopped using housing benefit to line the pockets of private landlords charging absurd rents. Building homes would create jobs, and if we brought rents…
Read More house music all night long.The Indy‘s City editor (and he is very much a City editor, none of that “business” page nonsense) Anthony Hilton has joined the clamour for the simple plan to save the world! Some of the larger associations are tapping into the aforesaid retail bond market, with Raglan, for example, raising £50m in September with an…
Read More Anthony Hilton joins the Simple Plan!OK. So you want to be part of Total Defence of the NHS. You want to join the 10,000. To be the first of the few. If you’re in any of the London boroughs in the title, here’s your chance. You have until the 15th July, Saturday, to apply on this web page. There’s a…
Read More Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington CCGs: Applications Open NowRed Brick would like you to know that you have a month to respond to the Government’s consultation on homelessness.
Read More Action momentOther stuff from Netroots UK. Having chugged through my official Brown Bag Lunch (which actually included Ribena, in a disturbingly infantilising touch), I went to the open space group on the Leveson inquiry. This ended up merging with the one on the LIBOR scandal. I was able to contribute by knowing how the LIBOR panel…
Read More Netroots UK catchup