Austerity Kills! Deaths of elderly was 'Gerineglicide' says former NHS consultant..

A number of studies that have been carried out in recent years have revealed how mortality figures (the death rate), which had been dropping steadily in England since the 1970s, have been reversed since 2011.  The studies have also claimed that the reversal in the downward trend in the death rate, is linked to government austerity policies and cuts in public expenditure.

In February 2016, the Daily Telegraph disclosed that preliminary data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), had shown that in just one year (2015), there was a 5.4% increase in deaths in England - equating to almost 30,000 extra deaths.  This represented the largest increase in deaths in the post-war period. Public Health England maintained that the 30,000 excess deaths were "not exceptional" and they claimed that the increase in deaths, was due to the influenza strain in 2015 that mainly affected older people.

This excuse of cold weather and a flu epidemic for the spike in the mortality rate in January 2015, was rejected by the authors of a report that was published in the journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in February 2017.  The researchers - Professor Martin McKee, Professor Danny Dorling, Dr Lucinda Hiam and Dominic Harrison, tested four possible explanations for the 30,000 excess deaths in 2015.  Data errors, cold weather and the flue epidemic, were all excluded. What they discovered was clear evidence of health system failures.  Almost all targets were missed - ambulance call out times and A&E waiting times. Staff absence rates rose and medical posts remained unfilled.  Significantly, many of the excess deaths were among the elderly population, those aged over 65-years-old. Professor McKee said:

"The impact of cuts resulting from the imposition of austerity on the NHS has been profound. Expenditure has failed to keep pace with demand and the situation has been exacerbated by dramatic reductions in the welfare budget of £16.7 billion and in social care spending." 

Another author of the report, Professor Danny Dorling of Oxford University and an advisor to Public Health England, said:

"I suspect that largest factor here is cuts to social services - to meals on wheels, to visits to the elderly.  We have seen these changes during a period when the health service is in crisis, while social care services have been cut back."

There is growing opinion and evidence that it's the elderly who are bearing the brunt of the cuts to NHS funding and social care.  Thousands of complaints have been made about care for the elderly in England. In 2013-14, some 14,888 complaints about care home residents aged 65 and over, were reported to 74 councils.  In February 2015, Claire Savage on BBC5 Live, reported that in West Sussex, 19 people died after suffering "sub-optimal care" at the Orchid View care home in Copthorne.  The Department of Health, called the abuse and neglect of vulnerable people "deplorable."  The neglect of elderly people often results in care home residents being rushed to hospital as emergency admissions.  In 2014-15, some 22,682 care home residents were rushed to hospital as emergency cases.  This was up from 13,906 in 2010-11, an increase of 63%.

Milton Pena, worked in the N.H.S. for forty years before retiring in October 2014.  He was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon for 24 years and spent 17 years working at Tameside Hospital.  He believes that the most common terminal event that caused the increase in deaths among the elderly population in 2015-2016, was institutional "Neglect!" Indeed, he argues that what was a blip in 2015 - the spike in the mortality rate - has now become a disturbing trend.  He said:  "The question is not why any particular individual died, but why, after many years of declining mortality, the death rate should increase so much." 

In an interview with Northern Voices (NV) he cited Professor Marion McMurdo, who in a letter to the British Medical Journal (B.M.J), stated that the N.H.S must adapt to ensure that it meets the needs of the population. In the letter, she stated: 

"There is a mindset among hospital Directors, Business Managers and some health professionals that frail elderly patients are 'not our core business'.  Few national providers would make such a blatantly ageist inference that its 'core business' was too tricky to manage, and propose to solve the problem be ceasing to attempt to deal with it."

According to Milton Pena, what is taking place is neither Euthanasia or Genocide, but what he calls "Gerineglicide", the killing of thousands of elderly and vulnerable human beings due to lack of resources from government, systemic failures, and institutional neglect.  He told NV:

"Gerineglicide is many things: poverty, misguided policies and directives e.g. the avoidance of hospital admissions, abysmal lack of bed capacity for the admission of patients with acute severe life-threatening conditions such as pneumonia etc.  Similarly, insufficient staff - nurses, midwives, radiographers, doctors or lack of resources to care for people in their homes.  Keeping elderly individuals with multiple ailments alive, does not make business sense to the mandarins that run health care 'planning and execution' in England. Prolonging the lives of the elderly is not profitable."

Back in 2017, when the Royal Society of Medicine published the paper "Why has mortality in England and Wales been increasing?", only one member of Parliament raised a question in the House of Commons:

"The Minister will be aware that mortality rates in England and Wales have increased by 5.4% in 2015, the biggest increase in the death rate for decades. She will also be aware that mortality rates have been rising since 2011. Has she done any analysis of what has been behind those trends?"

Milton Pena also says  that there has been a deafening silence from most of the professional bodies regarding the excess mortality that spiked in 2015.

After the financial crisis  of 2008, annual funding increases for the NHS fell from 4% a year to below inflation, even as a growing and ageing population increased demand for healthcare.  In November 2017, the New Scientist magazine referred to a 'landmark study' by Jonathan Watkins and colleagues of King's College London that found that after controlling for other economic changes, death rates rose after the cuts, especially among the over 65s.  The team also found that 120,000 more people died in England between 2010-2017, following funding cuts to the N.H.S. than would have been expected if trends in death rates before the cuts had been maintained.  The researchers also said that if this effect continues, a further 75,000 excess deaths could occur by 2020.

'Free Lunches' to School Meals in Tameside

 IN last Wednesday's Guardian, the writer, Tamasin Cave in an article titled 'Find out if your councillor is being wined and dined' wrote:  'The timeless practice of "gastronomic pimping", as Nye Bevan puts it, is a tool long used by commercial lobbyists to curry favour.'   

'These "meetings" are,' she says 'deliberately designed to create bonds, establish shared values and ultimately influence [local] council decisions.'

One must wonder if the recently deceased Councillor Kieran Quinn, who as boss of Tameside Council and chair of Greater Manchester Pension Fund [GMPF], was aware of this when he cosied-up so close to to the outsourcing company Carillion over the last decade?

Afterall, Councillor Quinn, who died suddenly last Christmas, told Construction News only last September:
'One of my pleasures of acting as GMPF chairman is using workers’ money to invest in the city they work in, and [he promised] there will be plenty more investment to come'

Today, after the collapse of Carillion, that now sounds like throwing good money after bad.

Tameside Councillor Quinn last September boasted to the Construction News' journalist Charlie Schouten, that he was actively encouraging closer associations between 'London-based businesses..... [because] they like talking to people like us; they see an opportunity here,' and forming partnerships with people like him.

This was an eloquent appeal by Councillor Quinn for greater public embroilment with big business, yet remember dear reader, it was delivered just after Carillion had issued a profit warning in July 2017.  Was Councillor Quinn trying to bailed-out the troubled company Carillion with public funds so as to cover up his own misplaced historic investment strategy?   Was he calling on the Town Council cavalry in Greater Manchester to rescue a company he realised was already on death row?

After all, he did say that 'If they [companies like Carillion] can come into partnership with us, it de-risks it for them.'

What did Tameside's Councillor Quinn mean by 'it de-risks it for them'?

In her article in last Wednesday's Guardian, Tamasin Cave, tellingly writes:
'One of the surest ways to access and influence the officials you seek to influence is to employ people who know local government inside out.  Councillors up and down the country are employed in the property lobbying business.  They are elected to represent the public interest and at the same time employed by developers seeking to influence the public sphere.'

In the case of Councillor Kieran Quinn and Tameside Council, it seems that Carillion didn't have have to do much lobbying with free lunches to gain influence.  Indeed, when it came to Councillor Quinn and his Council cronies, it seems they were not simply playing footsie under the table but were positively spreading their legs before the construction giant.

As I write this, there are I understand there have two Freedom of Information requests asking about a Tameside Council officer, who may or may not, have been made a director to Carillion. 

'What do developers want from their relationships [with Councillors]?', asks Ms. Cave.

Well in the case of the Carillion / Quinn liaison it amounted to contracts, partnerships and networking facilities.  But it could also in some cases, as Ms. Cave says, amount to help with 'straightforward planning permission; or relief from paying tax used to fund local amenities; or an agreement with the council on the amount of affordable homes the developer has, or doesn't have, to provide.  All of which can be negotiated by the councils upon which such lavish hospitality is poured.'

The one-time chairman of Westminster Council's planning committee Robert Davis was, according to Ms. Cave, 'entertained 150 times by property industry figures in three years'..

Meanwhile, it seems a firm called OCS https://www.ocs.com/uk/services/catering/hospital-and-healthcare-catering/  that was brought to deliver a school meals' contract at Tameside MBC after the departure of Carillion, has now pulled out.    

 There'll be no 'gastronomic pimping' in the school canteens in Tameside.

Director sold shares before Carillion's decline

CARILLION's ex-finance director, Richard Adam, cashed-in nearly £800,000 worth of of his shares before the firm's collapse.

Today, Zak Garner-Purkis, the news editor of Construction News, wrote:

'It’s not every day that a director’s decision to sell the rest of their shares upon retirement is criticised in a statement by MPs.'

Yet today it seems that the situation with Carillion is an exceptional one, and the man under the microscope Richard Adam, was Carillion’s finance director for the 10 years leading up to the current crisis.

 Mr. Adam now says he didn’t see the storm clouds on the horizon when he sold his shares at the end of 2016, maintaining that the firm’s difficulties were manageable at that point.

But the Chair of the Work and Pensions select committee, Labour MP, Frank Field, saw it a bit differently.

'Dumping the last of his shares at the first possible moment because he is – with his own money at least – ‘risk-averse’.  What conclusions are we to draw from that?', the MP asked.

Or, as the HP SAUCE column in the current Private Eye wrote of the same esisode:
'During robotic evidence from another former finance director Richard Adam, his neighbour, (Richard) Howson rolled his eyes.'

Chairman Frank Field had also told the Select Committee that:  'Mr Adam pesided over Carillion's finances for a decade [and] he more than anyone else ought to know the merits of Carillion shares as a long-term investment in the light of his lengthy and lucrative tenure.'

'(By) dumping the last of his shares at the first possible moment because he is -with his own money at least - "risk averse".  What conclusions are we to draw from that?', asked Field.

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It’s the way ya tell ‘um

by Les May

THE former finance director of Carillion Richard Adam, he of the ‘funding the pension scheme is a waste of money’, dumped three quarters of a million pounds in shares in March and May last year.   He had stepped down from the company in December 2016 and got rid of them at the earliest opportunity.

If you wonder how these people get away with it look no further than the news coverage that this revelation generated in the ‘i’.  It got just 34 lines compared with the 46 lines devoted to a story about a dog owned by a university professor being relocated to the UK and about the same to a story about Cadbury’s chocolates and the NHS.

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Speaking your mind carries dangers in Corbyn's Labour Party!

Anti-Zionist Activist -Tony Greenstein

Speaking your mind has become a perilous activity in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. This month, Tony Greenstein a Jewish anti-Zionist activist, was expelled from the Labour Party after its national constitution committee (NCC), found that he'd broken the party's rules and was guilty of abusive behaviour.

The son of a Rabbi, Greenstein, regularly posts blogs on social media which are critical of Zionists and pro-Israeli Members of Parliament. He says that antisemitism is being used to silence people in the Labour Party who criticise the state of Israel over its policies towards the Palestinians and is a sham.

Greenstein's expulsion has been welcomed by Jewish Labour Movement and the Jewish Board of Deputies.  Ivor Caplin, south east chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement said:

"Deliberately harassing, intimidatory and hateful language of the kind Tony Greenstein has continually used has no place inside inside the Labour Movement."

Greenstein told the press that "Despite being Jewish, I was suspended as part of the false antisemitism witch-hunt in March 2016."

A row has broken out after it was announced that Ken Livingstone's two-year suspension is due to end on 27 April and that he's likely to be readmitted to the Labour Party within weeks. Livingstone was suspended when he was found to have brought the Labour Party into disrepute after stating that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930's. He says he was referring to the so-called Haavara agreement of 1933 between German Zionists and the Nazi government. Despite this being an historical fact, Labour's NEC is now planning to launch a new inquiry into allegations of antisemitism against him. Livingstone is threatening to take legal action if the party takes disciplinary action against him.

Over in Rochdale, Lancashire, Labour activist Mark Birkett, has been suspended by the Labour Party after raising issues about the election of Tony Lloyd in 2017 and his effectiveness as the Labour MP for Rochdale. Having claimed in emails that Lloyd was a 'shoe-in' MP, placed by Labour's NEC as the Labour candidate for Rochdale in order to find him a job, he also claims that Lloyd doesn't answer constituents letters or their queries. Labour refused to investigate his allegations and he was accused of threatening and intimidating Labour members. He now faces expulsion from the party.

Enough Said!

by Les May 
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THE editors of 'Northern Voices' have decided to give this post by Les May below some prominance owing to a level of half-baked thinking, which appears to be developing today in the anglo-saxon world.  Sensing this following the open letter published in Le Monde in January offering an alternative view to the #MeToo campaign, and signed by Catherine Deneuve and 99 other prominent French women, Agnès Poirier last month wrote '...an insider’s guide to French feminism'. In this essay Agnès Poirier comments on the Catherine Deneuve letter thus:
 'In other words, these 100 French women, representing many more in France, argue that this new puritanism (of the #MeToo campaign) reeks of Stalinism and its “thought police”, not of true democracy.  What they refuse to countenance is an image of women “as poor little things, this Victorian idea that women are mere children who have to be protected”, the same one extolled by religious fundamentalists and reactionaries.'
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A number of copycat actresses with an eye on some cheap publicity have announced they will wear black at the BAFTA awards on 18 February to support those ‘fighting’ sexual harassment.

On Tuesday 6 June 1944, 61,715 British men, 70,000 American men and 21,400 men from eleven other nations were landed on the beaches of Normandy.  They were there to start to liberate Europe and the World from the Nazi ideology.  By the end of the day 4,414 were dead and 5,500 wounded, in the fighting which followed.

Can anyone point me to any evidence that General Eisenhower was inundated with correspondence from outraged women demanding that every man accused of sexism, sexual harassment, misogyny, manplaining etc, should be withdrawn from the invading force? 

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 Anonymous said...

This makes no sense whatsoever. So it's fine for men to sexually assault women because men at times have fought in wars? What has the entertainment industry to do with war anyway?
I've read better journalism in the Daily Mail.So now you've gone after women, who's next on your list?

Friday, 23 February 2018 at 10:26:00 

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Les May said...

As the writer of the piece which drew this response I do not feel under any obligation to respond to a comment written by someone who is unwilling to put their name to it. However as it is predicated on an assumption that ‘women’ are a homogeneous group and that adverse comment on the behaviour of a small number of women is somehow an attack on all women, I will do so.

What this piece drew attention to was that these women were not ‘fighting’ sexual abuse, they were posturing.

When someone claims to be ‘making a stand’ or ‘fighting’ some perceived evil it is a good idea to ask what the cost to them really is. Posturing in a posh frock in front of the camera or clicking on a smartphone to tweet your favoured hashtag carries zero cost.

The men who made a stand against fascism in the Spanish civil war, the men who landed on the beaches of Normandy, the women of SOE who parachuted into occupied Europe, the men and women who joined Resistance groups, all stood to pay a terrible price for the choices they made. That is courage.

Similarly the people who emerged from the death camps can rightly be called survivors, as can the people who escaped from the Grenfell Tower fire. You can’t if you mean a man who was ‘trying it on’ put his hand on your knee.

And if I am going to ‘go after’ anyone it would be the spineless male journalists who have shown that the lack the balls to take on the more grotesque aspects of this witch hunt, which demands no less than that every accusation by a woman is assumed to be true, and ideas of natural justice and due process are jettisoned. Instead they have stood back and let women like Catherine Deneuve, Joanna Lumley and Germain Greer try to bring some sense of proportion to this issue.

Women are not some homogeneous group who all think the same way. The BAFTA women and the women journalists who drench them with praise are not a representative sample of all women. Stop pretending that they are.

Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 20:38:00 GMT

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THE DANGER TREE IN MANCHESTER

 Review of The Danger Tree at Manchester Library by Steve Watson
(Eastern Correspondent)

BILL Drummond is a former art student, musician with the KLF, one of two blokes who burned a £million quid on the Isle of Jura in 1994, and has steadfastly refused to explain why ever since.  

Bill has an affinity with the North, and has a long relationship with Liverpool having worked at the Everyman Theatre in the 1980s!   In one of his recent books on the nature of art he states that 'all galleries should charge at the point of entry.  And they should be proud to do so.  Because they should be putting on works that people are willing to pay to see.'

Drummond was back in Liverpool last year and several hundred people had paid £100 to attend a few of his events, one involved ripping pages out of a book, the other dressing up in yellow capes, wandering round Toxteth and finishing up by the docks watching a stack of pallets being burnt. Art at its best?

For those that 

a) didn’t have £100 to spend 

and b) if they had would have spent it elsewhere in Liverpool then a random stroll may have taken them into one of them deplorable free exhibitions or installations as they call them these days down near the Pierhead!  

The Danger Tree, with its promotional leaflet saying 'Free to Enter' was making its second visit to the City!   And the exhibition following a stint in Birmingham is now in Manchester. 

 

The Danger Tree is described as an augmented reality art exhibition by impressionist landscape painter Scarlett Raven, and digital artist story teller Marc Marot and within seconds of entering through the front door visitors find themselves somewhere between a shelled out French farm building and the No Mans Land of The Somme.   Just over a hundred years ago in the real life fields of carnage thousands of French, English and Commonwealth troops faced a barrage of shells to the point where on 1st July 2016 some 57,000 were killed, seriously wounded or missing to the point where their remains would never be found.  

The one place of shelter if you can call it that was a large gnarled tree capable of providing both a point of refuge and an easy target for enemy fire.  Earning itself its 'Danger Tree' name it became the spot where many soldiers from Canada fighting for the Commonwealth would depart this world and at this conjuncture stories diverge.  Some sources say the dead tree still remains others that its spot sports a replacement and there may well have been many different Danger Trees across the jagged landscape but regardless it remains a point of thought and respect. 

 

A good hour session in the exhibit (which I will remind you is free Mr. Drummond) and you may or may not be aware that art can sometimes be powerfully challenging and dragging you out of your comfort zone.  Such exhibitions can be very subjective but rather than a line of static paintings or objects the trick with the Danger Tree is the use of electric wizardry to transform the illusion of the bombed out farmhouse in a war zone into a place where the sheer horror of the Somme literally surrounds you.  Using something called Blipper technology which is best appreciated than understood visitors are given an Ipod which when scanned across Raven’s stunning landscapes bursts into sound and movement with the war poems of Sassoon, Owen and Brooke as well as contemporary poets and voiced by Christopher Ecclestone, Sean Bean and Sophie Okonedo.  Individual soundtracks and moving images make the words augmented reality into one hell (in every sense) of an experience. 

 

This isn’t art to visit and feel warm.  This is art where you come out into the day light and feel slightly humbled shaken and subdued, this is the reality of the Accrington Pals and other local battalions marching off to France and returning as just names on cenotaphs.  This isn’t highbrow art, no its shock tactics of a part of history in the anniversary of its final end.  Our fathers, grandfathers and more brought back to life for a short period by a skeletal tree amongst a field of poppies.

Take shelter beneath The Danger Tree if you will at Manchester Central Library’s Exhibition Hall (First floor) daily except Sunday until March 31st. Mon -Thurs 10.00am 6.00pm, Fri & Sat 9.00am to 4.00pm. 

 

And its free Mr Drummond! 

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Councillor Quinn on the Carillion connection

 'Changing Dynamic[s]' in building trade!
NV Editor: The story below shows an interview last September between the leader of Tameside Council / chairman of Greater Manchester Pension Fund, and the Construction News journalist Charlie Schouten, in which Councillor Quinn argued for closer association between 'London-based businesses.....they like talking to people like us; they see an opportunity here,' and people like him.  And then tellingly he adds:  
'If they [companies like Carillion] can come into partnership with us, it de-risks it for them.'

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LAST September Kieran Quinn, who died on Xmas Day, gave an interview to Construction News in which he related his ideas on the strategies of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund [GMPF] to the journalist Charles Schouten over lunch in the 19th century Midland Hotel. 

A former postal worker Mr Quinn, who holds down the job as GMPF chair with other tasks including the executive leader of Tameside Council and a place on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the scheme sums up his ambitions to make the fund a much more active player in not just in the local economy, but nationally, too.

Part of that, he said, is the shift in relationships between funders and contractors.

'We’ve started to have much more of a conversation with contractors because we want to take more direct holdings in projects,' he says.

'It also means that the relationship between contractor and funder becomes much more powerful.'

The GMPF fund, chaired last September by Quinn represents all 10 local authorities in the Greater Manchester area, has assets of over £21bn and includes more than 500 employers and over 350,000 members.   It was one of the key funders behind One St Peter’s Square after investing £10m in the scheme, which was completed by Carillion in 2014.  The scheme is typical of the office developments that have made Manchester so successful, not to mention so attractive to investors – although Mr Quinn declined to reveal what the fund’s return on the development is.

CONSTRUCTION NEWS: 
25 September, 2017 By Charlie Schouten

As Construction News sits down to talk to Mr Quinn in Manchester’s grand 19^th century Midland Hotel, the venue seems slightly out-of-kilter with our discussion, particularly as the GMPF has helped to fund some of the projects in the last decade that have made the city one of the UK’s fastest growing.

The fund, which represents all 10 local authorities in the region, has assets of over £21bn and includes more than 500 employers and over 350,000 members

The Farmer Review – Modernise or Die – published roughly a year ago, argued for radical changes in the construction industry.

Among the most controversial of these – and one that has since been rejected by the government – was the introduction of a client charge to help fund areas like innovation and skills.

The idea that clients should help take the lead on areas such as training, innovation and skills alongside main contractors is hardly a new one, but the calls for closer collaboration are continuing; perhaps a reflection of the relatively slow progress being made.

But what if collaboration and best practise could start at an even earlier stage?

That’s precisely the argument that Kieran Quinn, chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, is trying to make.

Funders and financers typically take a back seat in projects; particularly when it comes to conversations with main contractors.

But as Mr Quinn argues – should that now be ripe for a change?

Changing the dynamic

As the journalist Charles Schouten of Construction News sat down, last September, to talk to Mr Quinn in Manchester’s grand 19^th century Midland Hotel, he writes that the venue seems slightly out-of-kilter with our discussion, particularly as the GMPF has helped to fund some of the projects in the last decade that have made the city one of the UK’s fastest growing.

The fund, which represents all 10 local authorities in the region, has assets of over £21bn and includes more than 500 employers and over 350,000 members.

It was one of the key funders behind One St Peter’s Square (pictured, below) after investing £10m in the scheme, which was completed by Carillion in 2014. The scheme is typical of the office developments that have made Manchester so successful, not to mention so attractive to investors – although Mr Quinn declines to reveal what the fund’s return on the development is.

But for former postal worker Mr Quinn, who juggles his role as GMPF chair with others including the executive leader of Tameside Council and a place on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the scheme sums up his ambitions to make the fund a much more active player in not just the local economy, but nationally, too.

Part of that, he says, is changing the relationship between funders and contractors.

'We’ve started to have much more of a conversation with contractors because we want to take more direct holdings in projects,' he says.

“It also means that the relationship between contractor and funder becomes much more powerful.”

He uses the Airport City scheme – in which GMPF holds a 10 per cent stake alongside Manchester Airports Group and construction partners Carillion and Chinese firm BCEGI – as an example of the more traditional one-step-removed relationship between funders/contractors.

In that instance, he says, the fund has had “few direct conversations” with either Carillion or BCEGI due to its small holding in the project.

But that is now changing, and the new view is one of Mr Quinn’s fundamental aims for the pension fund.

'Our expectation now is to have a much more direct relationship with the contractor, or whoever is managing, overseeing and delivering the project,' he says.

'That’s not normally how pension funds would take things forward, but we’re now starting to change that; for example on two of our schemes, we have someone on the board, so we’re starting to change the dynamic.'

Fair contracts, fair payment

He adds that part of that approach is getting involved at a much earlier stage – so not just by having an influence over project funding, but also its tender documents.

“Pension funds like to have a stake when a project is completed, but they prefer not to have a stake when something is still in the ground. Again, we want to change that,” he says.

It’s not much of a surprise that social value and fair payment are two of Mr Quinn’s areas of interest here – after all, he has been active in the Communications Workers’ Union for more than 30 years. But he wants to make it a core part of the pension fund’s activities on future projects.

'A lot of councils have been focusing on social value for a while; as a pension fund we make significant investments, so why do we not say, as part of that relationship with contractors, that we expect the same sort of social value?' he says.

The fund is already putting this into practise, starting with One St Peter’s.

“As part of our discussions around One St Peter’s Square, we put social value [in the tender]; the number of apprentices, the number of local businesses, the geographic links to the centre,” he explains.

'All the things that you think would be commonplace in a council tender are now becoming commonplace in the pensions world, and we’re at the forefront of that.'

When CN points out that it’s not always easy to keep a lid on main contractors’ and subcontractors’ payment terms, he agrees that there is 'no magic wand', but argues that fair payment has to start at the top.

'It starts with strong auditing of our contracts,' he says.

'We shouldn’t hide away because ‘that’s just how [main contractors] work’; a lot of these financial mechanisms are a way to abuse the system.'

Part of this approach has now led to the fund exploring 28-day payment terms for all its projects, although Mr Quinn again admits that it may prove difficult to enforce – making the issue of contract auditing “all the more fundamental'.

'We know that we’ll sign [28-day payment] as part of our contract, but [main contractors] will subcontract out parts of the project and that’s where [those payment terms] start to get filtered out.

'Conversations on fair payment are absolutely relevant and we’re prepared to have them; it’s also exactly the right thing for the pension fund to get involved with.'

Again, he admits it may be 'beyond the reach and authority of a pension fund' to stop poor payment practices – that, he argues, should start at the very top with central government – but ensuring it is stamped out from any GMPF contract is his first step.

So what about the GMPF’s future pipeline?

On this, Mr Quinn gets straight to the point:  'There’s no conversation we’re not prepared to have'.

The fund has already restarted its stalled office scheme in the centre of Manchester, which it is aiming to get underway in 2019.

The GMPF is now looking to form a joint venture with a developer to bring forward the 55,025 sq ft Island Site development on John Dalton Street in Manchester city centre, after having purchased the three buildings on the site – Ridgefield, Old Colony House and Grange House – for an undisclosed sum in 2011.

He says that this scheme will be on a similar scale to One St Peter’s Square once complete, giving the city a major new landmark office development in the process.

On top of that, the Fund is 'actively seeking' more similar projects to invest in, particularly in Manchester, with more and more firms casting their eyes north for office space and investment.

'I’m having a lot of conversations with plenty of London-based businesses that want to come to Greater Manchester because they like talking to people like us; they see an opportunity here,' says Mr Quinn.

'If they can come into partnership with us, it de-risks it for them.'

And Mr Quinn doesn’t want to just limit the fund’s activities to the commercial world; its ambitions stretch into both infrastructure and housing.

For infrastructure investments, Mr Quinn again wants the fund to take a more active role, particularly with a £500m war chest to play with.

It has partnered with other institutions, including the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA), to back a number of schemes. These include rail schemes in Norfolk, and large-scale wind farm project in Strathclyde where it is a 45 per cent equity holder, in a joint venture with the LPFA.

Alongside the LPFA, the GMPF has taken a £150m stake in SSE’s Clyde windfarm, which is one of the largest onshore ones in Europe.

Mr Quinn says that this high-profile investment is exactly what the GMPF should be aiming for.

'The UK pension world doesn’t need to play second fiddle to Canadian funds; we should have the ambition and drive ourselves to have direct conversations on investment,' he argues.

While he says infrastructure can be a 'marmite' subject for funds –  'either you love it and want it as an active part of your portfolio; or you hate it and don’t want anything to do with it, because it’s too complex, too costly, and the returns are unclear' – it forms a core part of GMPF’s ambitions.

That could even stretch to one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country: the TransPennine Tunnel.

Investing in infrastructure

Sealing the business case and getting the tunnel under way is one of Mr Quinn’s key ambitions, particularly with one of the proposed routes for the £6bn tunnel passing through his home territory of Tameside.

'You’re looking at linking six to eight million people together, so if anything, the argument for the tunnel has been under-played,' he says.

'If we’re really talking about releasing the potential of the North, and creating a link between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and beyond, then the tunnel has to play a part.

'Every economic assessment I’ve seen – admittedly drafts and guesstimates – have said that the economic benefits that will be released from that connectivity are huge, so we’ll continue to press its case.'

It’s here that Mr Quinn outlines the scale of GMPF’s ambition: 'if the circumstances were right, we could be an equity holder in the tunnel', he says.

'Even if we commit £500m, that’s under 1 per cent of our holdings – it’s not as if we’re raiding the piggy bank to get those funds.

'We’re keeping it well within the normal risk parameters of a pension fund, but it gives us a brand new opportunity to do things much more large scale, and much more direct.'

And while he admits investing in the tunnel in the near future might be unlikely, it shows that shifts in the way pension funds work is one of the changes that contractors will need to be aware – and take advantage of – when opportunities arise.

For Mr Quinn, it’s about not only helping Greater Manchester grow, but grow in the right way.

'One of my pleasures of acting as GMPF chairman is using workers’ money to invest in the city they work in,' he says, 'and there will be plenty more investment to come'

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ANARCHY CAME TO MANCHESTER

 by Steve Watson (Eastern Correspondent)*
 

EACH generation carries those special dates with them as they age. Dancing in the street on VE day, Manchester Woolworths grand opening and a fairly obscure date of a concert held on 4th June 1976 with hardly anyone in the audience.

Anarchy came to Manchester, the Lesser Free Trade Hall to be precise, and apart from the Sex Pistols entertaining a sparse crowd the date has also gone down in legend because if you tot up all the people who claim to have been present on the night the floor would have collapsed under the weight. In fairness the follow up gig, same band same venue six weeks later on (20th July) was quite popular with more paying public, more spitting and bottles being lobbed at the band as a show of affection so its quite possible that many of those claiming to have been at the first gig were confusing the two or just making things up for affect.

One person who was most certainly at the first gig was one Mark E Smith who along with a smattering of others that were genuinely there went on to pick up cheap instruments from Johnny Roadhouse or Mazel Radio and by a combination of luck and hard work ended up in famous or almost famous bands.

Mark E Smith was a quintessential northerner in every sense of the word and apart from what amounts to an extended holiday in Edinburgh whilst he attempted to sort his head out he lived in Prestwich for all but the first six months of his life. While his contemporaries ‘bought’ out of the North or moved to Alderley Edge, Smith stayed put and as an adult trod the same streets that he played in decades earlier.

Leaving school at 16, following a stint in a meat processing factory Smith graduated to the Docks, then a hive of industry and employment now a mix of gentrification behind security fencing, plush shopping with the odd surviving bit of the past including kids throwing stones at cars. Whether Smith had read it or not isn’t known but he quit the docks to form The Fall from the Albert Camus novel, and then set about redefining the terms ‘abrasive, curmudgeon, irritating, shambolic and literary genius’ to name but a few!

Mark E Smith died on 24th January this year. For an admittedly limited number of people it was one of those shock moments filtering through on BBC News late at night. Not his actual demise as he’d looked closed to the grave exponentially over his final years more for the fact that this anti hero, argumentative Rottweiler with a unique wit was no longer able to reignite that spirit of the late 1970s with his drunken outbursts and spectacular stage presence. Described as ‘a strange kind of ant-matter national treasure’ Smith’s slurred lyrics were rarely printed on The Fall’s many albums, and even though their output followed the standard pop pattern of having maybe two or three catchy dance tunes on each offering then eight so so’s to fill up space you were drawn in just wondering what the hell he was on about and eventually obscure tracks became favourites.

A Fall gig became over 40 years something of an event to witness not for the music, but his on stage presence, would he turn up, would there be an on stage fight or would he wander off and perform vocals from the dressing room? It really was a lucky dip helped by a constantly changing line up (over 60 Fall members came and went over the years with the longest, bassist Steve Hanley quitting after putting up with Smith for nineteen years following a real fisticuffs scrum on stage in New York in 1998!

He hated London and seemingly most other places apart from North Manchester so he lived in Prestwich, shopped in Prestwich with the odd foray into Whitefield, and would insist that journalists from the music industry meet him in either his local The Woodthorpe Hotel or somewhere in the urban oasis of Manchester. Often drinking the journalist under the table at their expense! A not infrequent shopper in Whitefield’s very own Willy Wonka cake shop Slattery’s he was one of an elite group of musicians to purchase iced buns on Bury Old Road, a list that included Nico from the Velvet Underground and John Cooper Clarke, who likewise lived in Prestwich before sodding off to Colchester, various members of Elbow and more!

Described as a ‘a kind of northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly uncanny’, which sounds pretty heavy going and probably the better tribute came from Smiths ex wife, but one who put it much simpler on hearing of his death and said he was ‘defiantly Northern England’.

A drinker of Olympic standards as the band’s finances ebbed, and flowed his main problem as far as alcohol went was that he couldn’t afford it, but with a long list of hacks prepared to foot the bill as the band floundered Smith’s presence in print gave him the chance to keep things ticking over until he reinvented himself with another set of musicians ‘falling’ into the line up and reinvigorating The Fall brand! The last eight years of The Fall were a renaissance with sell out gigs, and a mix of all ages watching the spectacle, and proving the point that while Smith was the key the musicians deserved as much praise for their tight playing if not putting up with him!

Last appearing on stage in November confined to a wheelchair and looking as grim as he had for the past few years the only positive was that his days of kicking the drum kit over and twiddling with the amps had passed. His funeral was held last week at Blackley Crem or Crematorium as outsiders call it followed by a final knees up at The Woodthorpe near Heaton Park where if The Daily Mirror is to be believed bottles were thrown and beer generally thrown about at random. Other less reputable sources simply say it was fitting for Mark E Smith and all he embodied!

*  Watson is very much a hypocrite and sodded off from Manchester in 1991 first to Bedford and then Norwich.  He returns several times yearly to visit various Watsons around North Manchester and Oldham.  The Beatles played the Co-op Hall in Middleton, April 1963.  His 88 year old Auntie swears she was there!)

Institutionalised Incompetence

By Les May

YOU may have noticed a bundle of documents dated 29 January 2018 fastened to a lamp post close to a patch of green space somewhere near you. You should have done, there were 207 of them.  They relate to a hearing to take place at the Royal Courts of Justice in London and are intended to serve notice of that hearing.

Now you might think that someone would have taken great care to make sure that everything was, as they say, ‘kosher’:  no mistakes, no slip ups! But you forget, this is Rochdale, incompetence is the order of the day. So it should not really come as much of a surprise to find that the covering letter, signed by no less a person than David Wilcock, Legal Director,  Governance and Workforce, manages to inform the reader that the hearing will be on Tuesday, 19^th February. Now, God willing, there will be a 19^th of February 2018, but sure as hell it won’t be a Tuesday.

But of course, being only the covering letter rather than the legal bit you are no doubt allowed to make a mistake, even if you do it 207 times.   But probe just a bit deeper into the legal stuff and you find a paragraph about another hearing for an interim injunction on 6^th February to allow three clear days between the service of the notice and the date of the hearing.

I can say with complete certainty that the notice I read was put up on Monday 5^th February, which by my reckoning does not even allow for one clear day before the hearing. In other words someone at Rochdale MBC did not do their job properly.

This is not the first time that I have come across a casual approach to meeting the legal niceties of giving notice to the public.   A planning application relating to land below Castleton did not appear until the final date upon which objections could be made.   A notice relating to an area near Castleton station was affixed to a lamp post on the wrong street and related to a completely different street than that named in the notice.   A temporary road closure order in the Marland area related to a different road altogether.  A lady who has far more knowledge than I of the treatment of parents who have offspring subject to child protection orders, recently described the approach in Rochdale as ‘slap dash’.  I discussed the problem of getting anyone at RMBC to take seriously the possibility of election fraud in a NV piece on 2^nd May 2017.

I don’t expect councillors to check on every legal notice emanating from RMBC but I do expect that they will ensure that those charged with managing the legal affairs of the council meet both the letter and the spirit of the law.

It is long past the time when the Leader of the Council should be having a stiff word with the Chief Executive. Or perhaps neither of them really care.

Rochdale fire halts trains

OVER 100 fire fighters from across Greater Manchester are at the scene of a massive blaze at an industrial unit in Rochdale.
The fire broke out on Albert Royds Street just after 1.10am on Thursday morning and three homes close to the building have been evacuated.
The unit, measuring over 100 metres, is still fully involved in fire while Albert Royds Street remains closed and will do throughout the day. A nearby railway line is also closed and is affecting services between Todmorden and Rochdale.

A spokesperson from Northern Rail has said: "Due to the line-side fire between Rochdale and Todmorden it is unsafe to run trains along this route. There will therefore be no services between these stations until at least 09:00, disupting services between Manchester Victoria and Leeds.

"Train services from Leeds will terminate at Todmorden. Train services from Manchester Victoria will terminate at Rochdale."
Replacement shuttle services are being set up as follows:

• Manchester Victoria-Rochdale in both directions – Half hourly shuttles
  

• Leeds-Todmorden in both directions.
  

Replacement buses will also run between Rochdale and Todmorden.
Fire Crews are wearing breathing apparatus and tackling the fire with jets from above to put water on to the fire from height.

A large amount of smoke can be seen in the sky above Rochdale and local people are being advised to keep doors and windows closed. 

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Richard Blair speaks at Wigan town hall

by Andrew Nowell Email Published in Wigan Post on 5 Friday 02 February 2018

ichard Blair speaks at Wigan town hall Andrew Nowell Email Published: 14:15 Friday 02 February 2018

Read more at: https://www.wigantoday.net/news/george-orwell-s-son-visits-wigan-to-promote-new-musical-1-8997559

drew Nowell Email Published: 14:15 Friday 02 February 2018

Read more at: https://www.wigantoday.net/news/george-orwell-s-son-visits-wigan-to-promote-new-musical-1-8997559

drew Nowell Email Published: 14:15 Friday 02 February 2018

Read more at: https://www.wigantoday.net/news/george-orwell-s-son-visits-wigan-to-promote-new-musical-1-8997559

THE son of one the world's biggest literary stars came to Wigan yesterday as preparations for a new musical about the author’s local links hot up. Richard Blair, son of George Orwell, attended a civic reception at Wigan Town Hall as part of a day of promotion for Beyond Wigan Pier, a lavish show being penned by Ince musician Alan Gregory.  The show’s concert ADVERTISEMENT premiere in the main venue at The Edge is being crowd-funded, with

The show’s concert premiere in the main venue at The Edge is being crowd-funded, with supporters so far raising more than £4,500 of the £25,000 being sought.  Mr Blair and The Orwell Society have been staunch supporters of the project ever since Alan came up with the idea of a full-length theatrical spectacular, a scheme which had its kernel in a few songs he wrote for the 80th anniversary of 'The Road to Wigan Pier'.

The council has also thrown its backing behind the musical, which will be performed for the first time in April.  Local authority chief executive Donna Hall said: 'We were delighted to welcome Richard Blair to the town hall to recognise all of the hard work he has put into telling the story of Wigan’s rich history.

'This exciting Beyond Wigan Pier musical which will be written, produced and performed by Wiganers, is a chance for us to recognise the changing lives of local people and the positive future ahead for Wigan.'  Alan, who is also a ballet pianist and co-founder of Pies, Pianos and Pirouettes which teaches dance to rugby league lads, has amassed an impressive cast with popular Wigan singer

Scott Chapman and the borough’s X-Factor star Olivia Garcia involved.  Love duet 'Look at Me' will be released as a single on Valentine’s Day to drum up further interest in the show.  It is hoped that the crowd-funding appeal will show there is enough public interest in the borough to persuade Arts Council England to invest ahead of a full theatre staging in 2020.  The team behind the musical also believes it will be the catalyst for further regeneration in Wigan and, perhaps fittingly, underline the contrast between the town in the 21st century and in Orwell’s day.

Alan said: 'This will create investment and jobs in the borough.  My grand plan is to get all the people of Wigan to buy into this.

'The arts are an excellent way to attract investment into an area. This will be created by Wiganers and will hopefully create a whole different way of looking at the town and its people.'

Other supporters of the musical include church movement Transforming Wigan and Scholes community centre Sunshine House.  The crowd-funding campaign is the only way to secure a ticket for the first concert performance at the home of Today’s Community Church, with other rewards on offer ranging from being mentioned as a supporter in the end credits to VIP packages.

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On Bro. Pritchard's Penchant for Mr. Carillion

Editor:  

The post below was sent to Northern Voices by 
Mr. Pearson, a member of  Unite Greater Manchester 
Community branch.
We understand that this branch has been under investigation
by the North West Region of Unite owing to a series of 
complants by members.  Until the regional authorities of
Unite have determined what problems exist in this branch,
if any, the editors of NV have no views on this matter, except 
to say that we support the freedom to publish.
******
 by John Pearson

I THINK it is deplorable that Bro. Pritchard, the Chair of the Unite Greater Manchester Community branch should post such abusive material on the public internet.

He might have disliked the reference to the late Councillor Quinn in your article on the deep embedment that Carillion had in Tameside Council and the consequent repercussions in that borough of the firm's collapse.  A reasonable commentator would have complained at what you published but to call the publishers "lowlifes" is ad hominem excess at its extreme.

Not only is Bro. Pritchard's action deplorable but it is highly hypocritical since he and his supporters in the Unite Greater Manchester Community Branch officer's group have insisted upon, not only banning Bro. Chris McBride, for over a year now, from the branch's official Facebook group but they have also - unconstitutionally (per the decision of the Unite North West Regional Deputy Secretary, dated 18 January 2016) - removed Bro. McBride from his elected position as the branch's press and media Officer (Communications Liaison Officer) role.  Their primary charge against Bro. McBride was that he allegedly made ad hominem attacks on branch officers on social media.

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The Goalie and the Nazi

by Christopher Draper

CHANCES are you’ve never heard of Jack Kirby but he deserves public recognition as a bona fide Northern Hero.  The North was never short of footballers with scoring ability and popular appeal but Kirby had neither.Jack was a quiet, modest goalkeeper who in 1934 defied the concerted might of his Derby County Management, the British Government and his Nazi hosts and alone refused to salute fascism.

(insert amended Derby County Shield here)

Nazi Football

Hitler hated football but saw the game’s potential for showing off Nazi physical prowess.  When he assumed power in 1933 Germany was a weak footballing nation that hadn’t participated in the 1930 World Cup but Hitler was determined to remedy that.  The head of the German Football Association, Dr Otto Nerz, the man who brought Jack to Germany, shared Hitler’s view and not just on football. Nerz was a devoted member of the Nazi Party long before Hitler’s accession and was as determined as the Fuhrer to make the national team a model of Nazi success.  To this end he travelled extensively studying successful foreign teams, including periods 'living-in' with Aston Villa, Glasgow Rangers and Arsenal.
Nerz similarly shared the Fuhrer’s rabidly anti-semitic prejudices and subsequently detailed his struggles,  'Jews and their bondsmen continually made the lives of the leadership (of the football association) very difficult, particularly with regard to the issue of professional players. During the crisis before 1933, there was a great danger that football would also become Judaized. The major clubs were always deeply in debt and the creditors frequently were Jews.  The drive towards professional football was very strong and the state at that time could not give the leadership of the sport any support because the state itself was dependent on the Jews.'
With Hitler running the state and Nerz running the F.A., German football was swiftly 'cleansed' of racially unacceptable players and managers but this didn’t concern the English F.A .

New Best Friends

The leaders of English football admired Hitler’s commitment to the game and were keen to cooperate in raising Nazi Germany’s international profile.  Within a year of Hitler’s take-over Dr Otto Nerz had secured the agreement of the English FA for top team Derby County to tour Germany playing exhibition matches against a German FA XI.  The British Government and almost all elements of the English Establishment were delighted at this public demonstration of our two nations’ shared values.
In February 1934 Dr Otto Nerz announced details of the Derby County tour to the international press telling reprorters,  'They play very attractive football and their style of play is likely to make a big appeal to Germany.'  The tour awaited the English close season when Derby would play successive matches at Frankfurt, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Dortmund with the first kicking-off on 10 May.

Rams on Tour

Jack Kirby along with sixteen team mates and half-a dozen officials, including a photographer from the Derby Telegraph left Derby station late on Sunday evening, 6 May 1934.  Sailing from Dover at noon the following day the party didn’t finally arrive at their hotel until the early hours of Tuesday. Everyone was in good spirits although, as the Derby Telegraph reported from Frankfurt, everything hadn’t entirely gone to plan,  'The Derby County party arrived here this morning in very happy mood in spite of a lengthy hold-up at one a.m. at the German frontier.  We were requested to produce all moneys in our possession.  This is an innovation since Herr Hitler’s regime.  The same procedure takes place when the traveller leaves Germany.  The German authorities thus have a check on one’s purse, the motive being to make sure that travellers do not leave Germany with more money than they had in their possession on arriving in that country.'
As soon as were met at their Frankfurt hotel by Otto Nerz they experienced no further obstructions as he chaperoned them around Germany ensuring that everywhere they were enthusiastically received. Specially translated English language menus were provided at eating places, dedicated guides provided and relaxing river trips on the Rhine organised.

A Rum Do

By May 1934 German football had already been thoroughly Nazified with both teams expected to stand and deliver a formal 'Hitler salute' before kick-off.  The Derby County men weren’t keen to comply and made this clear to club officials well before the Frankfurt match, as George Collins much later recalled, 'We told the manager, George Jobey, that we didn’t want to do it.  He spoke with the directors, but they said that the British Ambassador insisted we must.  He said the Foreign Office were afraid of causing an international incident if we refused. It would be a snub to Hitler…'
Despite Herr Nerz’s cosseting the players were beginning to realise that they were pawns in a wider political game and the Germans were determined to win.  As the Telegraph reported, 'The German pivot was playing very unorthodox football…he repeatedly played the man instead of the ball…
Bowers was badly fouled and injured…he came around after about three minutes (although) still appeared dazed…Kirby was the next to receive an injury.'  Even the referee seemed to be under orders from Nerz, 'It is interesting to note that the second half lasted 55 minutes and Herr Otto Nerz had to send a message to the referee by a linesman to remind him that it was much past time.'
The jubilant Germans won 5-2 although the Telegraph reporter claimed, 'Even the German authorities doubted two of the side’s goals.'  What he didn’t report was the Derby team’s instructions to salute.(pic of Derby team giving Nazi salute – except Jack!)

The Quiet Man and the Nazi

Jack Kirby was a Derby man through and through. Born at Overdean in South Derbyshire in 1910 there were Kirby’s all over the area and for generations they’d worked down the pit. Jack’s grandad was a miner, his dad was a miner and he never forgot his roots,  When instructed to salute fascism Jack adamantly refused.  As the photo shows, whilst the rest of the team followed orders, defying 35,000 chanting German football supporters Jack Kirby stood his ground and kept his arms by his sides.  It was a gesture every bit as brave and powerful as the iconic Black Power salutes of the 1968 Olympics although in 1934 nobody mentioned it.  This picture, taken by the accompanying Derby Telegraph photographer wasn’t published in the paper, nor was the incident reported.  There was no protest from the Nazis, no apology from the British F.A. and simply no mention of Jack’s defiant gesture in any media outlet.  It was fake Non-News, a conspiracy to keep quiet about an astonishingly brave public act of opposition to Hitler. Only after Jack Kirby’s death in Derby in 1960 did his old team mate George Jobey reveal Jack’s astonishing bravery, 'We did what we were told. All except our goalkeeper, Jack Kirby'.
Jack died as he had lived, a quiet unassuming hero. Satisfyingly, his 1934 bete noire Dr Otto Nerz eventually received his come-uppance.  Much admired by fawning English sports reporters as the, 'virtual dictator of German Football,' in 1945 Nerz was captured by the invading Red Army. Identified as an irredeemable Nazi,  Dr Otto Nerz was interned in Sachsenhausen where he died of meningitis on 19 April 1949.

Christopher Draper (February 2018)

Leaked ledgers confirm Carillion’s blacklisting

                                     sent to NV by Joe Bailey (Unite) 
FAILED construction giant Carillion was a major supporter of an illegal blacklisting outfit that targeted safety activists and trade union reps, leaked documents have confirmed.  The firm has been linked to blacklisting for years, with the Scottish Affairs Select Committee in 2013 publishing evidence about how Carillion liaised with the blacklisting agency, the Consulting Association, either directly or via its subsidiaries.  Six managers directly involved with the association were named in the document.  Subsequently, the GMB union estimated that from October 1999 to April 2004 Carillion checked at least 14,724 names against files illegally held by the covert blacklister. Invoices and sales book records, seized by the Information Commissioner’s Office during a raid in 2009, showed that Carillion paid £37,814.72 to the Consulting Association between 1999 and 2006.  This month the Canary obtained the Consulting Association’s entire set of ledgers, which confirmed Carillion’s routine payments for data from the Consulting Association files. Dave Smith, joint secretary of the Blacklist Support Group, said: “Carillion blacklisted me after I raised concerns about safety on their building sites; it ended up in the European Court of Human Rights. At the very same time the company were milking public sector contracts including in the NHS. Not another penny of taxpayers’ money should be given to these wretches. 
In May 2015, Carillion, together with several other construction companies, agreed on a payout of around £80m in compensation to almost 800 blacklisted workers.

Ÿ  The Canary. The Metro.

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Mr Evan Pritchard's Yellow Brick Road Approach

Britain's Yellow Brick Road to Socialism

FOR a more detailed look at the CPB {Communist Party of Britain), it's history, theory and policies, please take a look at the official party programme, "Britain's (Yellow) Brick Road to Socialism".  Evan Pritchard the loyal party member that he is, has written the curiously brave comment below on the post entitled  'Tameside, the costs add up as receivers move in' about the local scandal involving Carillion 'aggresive accounting', and Tameside MBC, dated Sunday, 28 January 2018.

 

Evan [Pritchard} said...

Your reference to Kieran Quinn shows what a bunch of lowlifes you really are.
Beneath contempt.

Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 14:51:00 GMT 

EVAN Pritchard is a brave and honourable man, as Mark Antony said of Brutus in Shakespeare's play.  Evan is not only the President of the Manchester Unite Community Branch, but he distributes the Communist Party newspaper the Morning Star.  Both noble tasks require the mobilisation of all his consummate skills and abilities.

Both tasks are a thankless jobs!

We should all admire those who seek to promote unpopular causes, even where we disagree with the sentiments as in this case.  Nay, we ought to especially admire Evan Pritchard, when he is bold enough to protest about the 'lowlifes' on Northern Voices and by extension at Tameside TUC, when they have the audacity to challenge Kieran Quinn, the recently dead leader of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council; who also happened to be the Chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and a position of  Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

Like Brutus in Shakespeare's play, the local Labour Party's noble Kieran Quinn, has been praised by all and sundry. special  praise came from the Tameside Chief Executive, Steven Pleasant, who said that 'The book of condolences [for Kieran] includes the signatures of a former Prime Minister, an Olympic gold medallist and members of the local pigeon-fancying club.'

High praise indeed truly he was one of the Great and the Good!

Yet, the man from the Morning Star, Evan Pritchard, has heroically gone and belittled those of us who are critically challenging the odd partnership of Tamside MBC and Kieran Quinn, who had been tenaciously promoting Carillion with its 'aggressive accounting' techniques and even turned a blind eye to the blacklisting of local electricians like Steve Acheson, who lives in Denton.

Mr. Pritchard's comment makes an eloquent defence of the dead Tameside Councillor Quinn's right to be left alone, despite his very cosy relationship with the blacklising company Carillion.   Would Evan have been as keen to support Ian Kerr who dropped dead in similar circumstances, yet before he left this world he admitted to keeping an illegal data base with over 3,000 names on it?  What about Joe Stalin?  I've just seen the black comedy film 'The Death of Stalin', who died of a sudden stroke, would it have been wrong of us to criticise his crimes out of some kind of sensitive to his daughter's feeling?

None of this is intended to compare Evan Pitchard to Stalin.  Evan Pritchard does have Stalin's strong stomach or sense of humour.   No what is implied by Evan Pitchard's comment is that he is prepared to overlook or keep quiet about Kieran Quinn's partnership with Carillion, and that objectively suggests he approves of the PFI deals done, the partnerships created by Tameside Council, and by extension employment practises like the blacklist which the company was engaged in.  In the current climate that is a brave position for someone in the trade union movement to embrace.

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