General Secretary of the UCU pays substantial damages to Paul Embery.

 

Paul Embery (left) - Dr Jo Grady (right)

I remember reading some time ago, about Paul Embery, threatening to start legal proceedings for defamation against Dr Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), after they had a spat on Twitter about an incident on a train.

Embery, a fireman, columnist, and a trade union activist, had been travelling on the train from London to Norwich in August 2022, with his children, when he challenged a group of women about their alleged loutish behaviour, threats, and foul and abusive language. He was threatened with a beer bottle and told he would be knocked out. He'd asked them to stop swearing in front of his children. He filmed the incident on his phone and tweeted a photo of the group, to the train operator Greater Anglia, expecting that they would take action against the women. The tweet 'went viral' and was seen by over a million people including Dr Grady.

Among other things, Grady accused Embery of being "creepy" and "bullying women." She tweeted: "It's creepy to record young women on the train, share that video, and lie about them for clout." Over a period of two days, Grady published other tweets: "Grow up Paul and take a day off bullying women and pretending to be outraged for clicks. It's pathetic at any age, but especially yours."

Embery claimed that she'd falsely portrayed him as "a misogynist, a pervert, and a liar", and had caused "immeasurable harm" to his reputation. When Grady refused to apologise and withdraw her allegations after Mr Embery wrote to her, he started legal proceedings which he financed through crowdfunding and raised £24,000 in just eight days.

Earlier this month, the High Court, was told that Grady had agreed to pay damages, legal costs, and had given an undertaking not to repeat her allegations. Paul Embery told a reporter that he expects to receive £10,000 in damages and that Dr Grady will have to pay over £12,000 in costs. He said he will be donating the damages awarded, to groups that are campaigning to defend women's sex based rights.

Within the UCU, Dr Grady is facing several votes of no confidence in her leadership of the union which will be debated at the union's annual congress. Since 2019, the union has been involved in the country's longest-running dispute over pay and working conditions which some union members feel, is going nowhere, under Grady's leadership of the union. There have also been concerns raised about Grady's outspoken views on social media. Jo Grady seems to be rather young to be a General Secretary of a British trade union and this is reflected in the asinine remarks directed at Paul Embery.

Crime Commissioner was forced to resign after interfering in murder trial.

 

Councillor Tafheen Sharif

Tomorrow, 23rd May 2023, Tafheen Sharif, a Labour councillor from Mossley, will be confirmed as the new civic Mayor for Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council for the year 2023 -2024. She will make history by becoming Tameside's first Muslim and ethnic minority mayor. Councillor Sharif, who comes from Luton, in Bedfordshire, is a law graduate and a Justice of the Peace. She has represented Mossley since 2016.

From 2012 to 2014, councillor Sharif was deputy police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire. As a PCC she was forced into resigning her position in 2014, after she attempted to interfere in a murder plot trial involving a cousin, who was involved in a love triangle, that led to her fiancé, Antif Ali, 28, being shot by a hired hitman. It was alleged that councillor Sharif had used her position to try and get a judge to stop her cousin's name from being made public, as it would have revealed embarrassing details about her tangled love life. Her cousin, Naveem Dadd - who was also involved in another relationship with a rival suitor, Shahzad Mahroof - was a witness and gave evidence in the trial.

Mahroof had hired the contract killer, Bernard Pillay, to kill Mr Ali. In May 2013, Pillay rammed Mr Ali's car off the road while he was driving in Luton. When Mr Ali got out of his car, he was shot in the leg with a sawn-off shotgun, which left him with life-changing injuries. Police and court officials said that this unauthorised approach by councillor Sharif, could have led to the case being abandoned at great cost, and they were forced to step in and to report her. Her boss, Olly Martins, the Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire, told her that her position was untenable and Sharif was forced to resign her position in July 2014.

Mahroof, 28, and Pillay, 41, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder and given life imprisonment. The Bedfordshire police and crime panel referred Tafheen Sharif to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), to establish if any crime had been committed.

Reese-Mogg accuses the government of gerrymandering!

 

Jacob Reese-Mogg

The former Conservative minister, Jacob Reese-Mogg, has implied that the Tory government introduced photo voter ID in political elections to boost their election chances. Although he was responsible for introducing this measure as Commons leader, which the government said was necessary to counter voter fraud, Reese-Mogg, told a conference of Conservatives in London, that there was "no evidence that personation (the crime of voter fraud) was a serious problem." He added, "There have been hardly any prosecutions or even any complaints in this country over decades."

Although around 11 million people in this country do not possess a driving license or a passport, photo ID became necessary for the first time in elections, on 4 May. For those who didn't possess the required photo ID, the government introduced a 'Voter Authority Certificate' (VAC), that could be obtained from their local authority to vote in the May 2023 local elections.

In February, The Observer newspaper, reported that fewer than 21,000 people out of an estimated 2 million people who required a VAC to vote in the elections had applied for them. Only 505 people aged over 75 had applied and fewer than 6% of applicants were aged under 25. Reese-Mogg told the conference that the change had backfired and "had upset a system that worked perfectly well" and had "made it hard for our own voters" to take part in England's local elections. He said, "We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative so we made it hard for our own voters..."

Although critics denounced the governments photo voter ID scheme as 'gerrymandering' aimed at giving them an electoral advantage, the Conservatives lost more than a 1,000 councillors and control of 48 councils, with Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens, all making gains at the expense of Rishi Sunak's party.

Many months ago, I wrote to Downing Street, asking a number of questions about why the government had introduced the voter ID scheme in elections, when voter fraud was almost non-existent. I also asked them how they responded to the charge of critics that they were trying to rig elections in their favour. I'm still waiting for a reply. I don't normally vote in political elections because I haven't much faith in self-serving politicians who are in the pockets of the money men, or a political system that bows and scrapes to them, but in May, I decided to give it a go for research purposes, to see how the system worked. As a pensioner, who would never vote Tory, nor voted for Brexit, I didn't have a problem. I simply produced my age related free bus pass as evidence of my ID which was accepted along with my polling card. The staff at the polling station told me that they had not had any unpleasant incidents or problems with voter ID.

Britain is essentially a two-party political state with Labour and the Conservatives being the dominant political parties. Whichever political party gets into power; they always try to change the voting system to give themselves an electoral advantage. However, why the Tories would want to rig a political system that already favours them, is intriguing. In the last 123 years, the Labour Party have held power for just 33 years. For two thirds of the 20th century, the Conservatives were in government and in control of Britain. What does that tell you about the British people and its political system? What it tells me, is that whoever you vote for, capitalists like Jacob Reese-Mogg always get in, even if they don't stand in elections, and nothing much changes. With Keir Starmer's Tory-lite Labour Party, choosing which party to vote for, is a bit like choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Butcher sexually abused child while dressed as a woman.

 

Child molester - Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller, a 53-year-old transgendered butcher from Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, who uses the name Amy George, has pleaded guilty in Edinburgh high court to sexually abusing and abducting a child, who he sexually abused in his bedroom, over a period of 72-hours.

At the time of the abduction, Miller was dressed as a woman. The father of three, told the court that he was following his motherly instincts. Following his arrest, the police seized three laptops and found 242 indecent images of children. Miller, who is currently being held in a male prison, HMP Edinburgh, will be sentenced on August 15.

The trial Judge, Lord Arthurson, described Miller's offences as "abhorrent crimes" of the utmost "deviance and depravity" which were "the realisation of every parent’s worst nightmare." Scottish First Minister, Humza Yousaf, has refused to say if Miller will be transferred to a women's prison after sentencing.

Gran on Zimmer Frame tasered in Aussie care home.

 

Clare Nowland (inset)

A 95-year old grandmother is in hospital and in a serious condition, after she was tasered twice by a police officer in a nursing home in Cooma, New South Wales, Australia.

The police say that they were called to Yallambee Lodge in Cooma, when Clare Nowland, had picked up a steak knife and refused to drop it. The mother of eight, who suffers from dementia, and is 5' 2" tall and weighs 6' 7 pounds, was using a Zimmer Frame at the time and was walking slowly. She fell to the floor sustaining severe head injuries. Her family say that she's in a critical condition and on end of life care in Cooma Hospital.

The police officer who fired the taser, joined the police twelve years ago. He's now been suspended pending an investigation. Assistant Commissioner, Peter Cotter, declined to say if the officer had used excessive force but said he'd seen video footage from a body camera that was "confronting" to watch. He declined to release it publicly.

GP's demand the right to charge patients fees.

 

With the advent of the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, many GP's became reluctant to do face-to-face appointments with patients and some ended walk-in surgeries and introduced 'triage'. Although the government eased restrictions in May 2021, and urged GP's to start seeing patients, in many cases this did not happen.

Although hospital doctors and nurses, dentists, and opticians, were seeing patients face-to-face, many GP's offered their patients, virtual consultations by telephone or Skype or WhatsApp.

As many NHS patients are finding it increasingly difficult to see a GP, the GP's are now demanding the right to charge patients fees for consultations so they can jump the queue. Many NHS hospital trusts are already telling NHS patients that they can jump the queue if they're prepared to pay for treatment.

It seems extraordinary, that NHS waiting lists, delays, and other bureaucratic hiccups, can be easily circumvented when your prepared stump up some cash and pay for your medical treatment. Even the GPs reluctance to face patients can be overcome, if you're prepared to grease their palms.

I tend to agree with those who argue that the so-called crisis in the NHS, has been largely engineered by a Tory government that would like to privatize healthcare in Britain and wants to see a greater role for the private sector. The Labour Party also favours more private sector involvement in providing healthcare. Both the Tory Party and the doctor's union the British Medical Association (BMA), initially opposed the formation of the NHS in July 1948.

As more people start to pay for medical treatment, there's is a danger that it will create a two-tier health service where those who can pay get urgent treatment, and those who can't, have to wait. There's also the danger that we will lose the NHS by default.

Black Sheep Brewery Goes Bust

 

As a real ale drinker, it's sad to hear of the demise of the Black Sheep Brewery, but it's not surprising. Pubs and breweries are closing because the price of a pint of beer in some places, has become far too expensive. In some places, a pint of beer costs more than a bottle of wine.

This is why people are buying from the supermarkets or go in J D Wetherspoon. Even though Tim Martin, the Chairman of J.D Wetherspoon, has recently jacked up the price of food and drink in his 836 pubs, it's still far cheaper to drink in his pubs than most other establishments. His business model is pile it high and sell it cheap. He undercuts his competitors because of economies of scale, where he can negotiate discounts for bulk purchases.

The price you will pay for a pint, will also vary in different Wetherspoon pubs subject to the location. There's no point in blaming the rising cost of a pint of beer on the pandemic, because beer prices have been increasing far faster than inflation, for donkey’s years and so as the tax we pay on it. Back in the early 1970s I could buy ten pints of beer for £1.

Admittedly, wages weren't as high as they are today, but a pint of beer was still far cheaper than it is today. In some places, they're now paying over £5 for a pint of beer. No wonder pubs are closing.

Who Killed Ruth Perry?

 

Who Killed Ruth Perry?

by Christopher Draper

On 8th January 2023 the head teacher of Caversham Primary School killed herself when OFSTED downgraded her school from “Outstanding” to “Inadequate”. Matt Rodda, the local Labour MP demanded; “OFSTED must now ask themselves some tough questions about their role”. Yet many who now point the finger of blame at OFSTED colluded in creating the monster they now condemn.

The Nature of the Beast

On 25th March 2023 The Observer reported, “Stress caused by Ofsted inspections was cited in coroners’ reports on the deaths of 10 teachers over the past 25 years”. This could have been predicted by teachers from the time Ofsted began in 1992. I qualified as a teacher fifty years ago, in 1973, when I was criticised by comrades as a “soft cop for the system” I argued then that the old authoritarian school system (corporal punishment, examinations, grammar schools etc) was giving way to a more enlightened approach. Creative, child-centred, learning-by-discovery methods were being widely adopted by primary schools and beginning to influence the new comprehensives.

At that time education was administered locally and Local Authority school inspectors were formally reconstituting themselves as “Advisers” with the focus more on assisting teachers, schools and pupils rather than policing the system. I don’t claim it was heaven on earth but new ideas flourished and the educative process was moving from domination to liberation but as the education system was propelled by the radical cultural changes initiated in the 1960’s the reactionaries began to react.

The Roots of Uniformity

Many on the left blame Thatcher for turning the tide but years earlier Prime Minister James Callaghan sowed the seeds that sprouted Ofsted. Speaking at Ruskin College in 1976 Callaghan proposed replacing the autonomy of schools to create their own curricula with a standardised national curriculum. As the teachers’ delegate to York Trades Council at the time I was surprised to find fellow trade unionists welcomed this move towards centralization. They actually wanted their kids “trained at school for the world of work” whilst I argued, on the contrary, that schools should be less like factories not more.

An Authoritarian Framework

Callaghan’s government didn’t survive long enough to impose his centralised curriculum but Thatcher eagerly embraced his scheme. Sixties radicalism was anathema to Thatcher who recognised the potential of ideas to inspire progressive political change which she was not only determined to prevent but to roll back. Kenneth Baker was tasked with creating a National Curriculum fit for the nineteenth century. Learning was commodified and the whole system increasingly privatised with schools acting as competing businesses. Sadly, most head teachers proved only too willing to operate as CEO’s with balance sheets, elevated salaries and performance bonuses.

The National Curriculum was instituted in 1988 but it was left to John Major, in 1992, to create an Ofsted Inspectorate to enforce this regime. Where the previous inspection system helped schools identify and repair weaknesses the Ofsted role is to find fault not offer solutions. The consequence of an Ofsted inspection is that a school is crudely ranked on a four point scale, if assessed as grade four a school is placed in “special measures!”

The sixties philosophy of “The Child at the Centre of their Learning” has been supplanted by a top-down curriculum directed by public school educated politicians with creativity replaced by commercial values. From its origins, Ofsted was a political project devised by politicians of both major parties with collusion from self-serving individuals within the educational establishment.

Collaborators

Politicians enjoy wielding power over others and many head teachers are similarly motivated although some are simply politically naïve. Heads across England facilitated the Frankenstein’s monster that is Ofsted, incorporating quotes from inspection reports in prospectuses and even (as illustrated above) displaying banners at their boundaries boasting of a favourable Ofsted assessment. Under the old inspection system, schools were not permitted to selectively quote from inspection reports to prevent this shabby form of competitive advertising. Very few heads have had the courage or decency to publicly challenge Ofsted. In 2019 Ruth Perry herself invited Ofsted into her school for a voluntary inspection which included Chief Inspector Spielman! In seeking approval from Ofsted and advertising its commendations head teachers ultimately made a rod for their own backs which some have tragically come to regret.

Many heads have gone further and taken Ofsted’s shilling (or rather up to £500 a day) and acted as Inspectors at other schools. In doing so they have assisted Ofsted in creating the thoroughly toxic atmosphere that pervades schools throughout England to the detriment of teachers and even more so to children.

Education, More Political than Politics

Matt Rodda M.P. now seeks political advantage criticising Ofsted but I have before me a front page article I wrote for Freedom in March 2000 defending the internationally acclaimed free school, Summerhill, from a determined attempt by Ofsted (and then Labour Education Minister, David Blunkett) to close it down. Lest anyone be taken in by the belated bleating of Labour politicians and craven head teachers, my article noted, “British education has been colonised by government appointees, toadying heads and armies of commercial “consultants”. Collaboration is rife and children and teachers are kept chained to approved curricula by rigid testing and assessment”.

Ofsted is but one element in an ever more authoritarian education system dominated by commercial values. The one thing Ofsted accurately reflects is affluence with schools in well-off areas four times more likely to be assessed as “Outstanding” than schools in disadvantaged areas. Former inspector, Colin Richards, reveals how Ofsted obscures such politically inconvenient truths, “ much of what those undertaking the inspection had originally written was removed from the final report, including details of the number of pupils with special educational needs, from deprived backgrounds or were not English speakers."

Witchfinder General

Amanda Spielman, the current head of Ofsted, continues the long tradition begun by Chris Woodhead in 1992, of acting as a government stooge. Neither qualified nor experienced as a classroom teacher, Spielman’s background in City finance nonetheless commends her to government. After boarding school and Cambridge she worked successively for KMG Thomson McLintock; Kleinwort Benson; Newstead Capital; Bridgewater Business Analysis; Mercer Management Consulting and Nomura Principal Finance.

Appointed head of Ofsted in 2017, in 2019 Spielman said students accused of sexual assault should be free to attend school along with their accusers. This provoked criticism of her lack of understanding of basic safeguarding procedures and contradicted Ofsted’s own guidelines. Ironically this was very area of weakness cited in fatally branding Ruth Perry’s leadership as “Inadequate”.

Predictable gestures from Keir Starmer, such as sacking Spielman or reforming Ofsted will achieve little. The National Curriculum and the whole panoply of centralising measures and commercialisation of education must be scrapped with a return to a local system respecting the ideas and experiences of children, parents and teachers.

Belarus: Dictatorship bans unions and jails union leaders!

 

Belarus: Unions crushed and leaders jailed - we need your solidarity today

Two weeks ago I sent you this message -- and 3,900 of you responded with messages of protest to the government of Belarus.   If you did not yet send off your message, please do so right now.  Click here.  The more of us send the message, the louder our voices -- and the greater the chance that the government will be forced to listen. If you did send off a message - thank you! But please make sure that many more peopl;e are aware of this very important campaign.  Spread the word to your friends, family and fellow union members.      One year ago, on 19 April 2022 dozens of union leaders and activists of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions were arrested.  The reason for the arrests was the public anti-war trade union position and criticism of the Belarusian authorities for violations of fundamental human rights.  More than 30 trade unionists were sentenced to up to 9 years on trumped-up charges.  All democratic trade unions were liquidated and trade union activity was banned.  Union activists and workers seen participating in the 2020 protests were dismissed.  Fired workers cannot find jobs, and their families are left without a livelihood.  Jailed union leaders are listed en masse as extremists and terrorists.  This is unacceptable.  It must stop. Unions have the full right to operate freely and to defend the rights and interests of their members.  Please take a moment to add your name to the global protest demanding that the government of Belarus release the trade union and political prisoners, end repression of trade union activists, and restore of guarantees of legal activities of independent trade unions. Click here: http://labourstart.org/go/belarus23 Thank you -- and please spread the word!

Eric Lee

The woman who falsely accused Emmett Till dies in Mississippi!

 

Carolyn Bryant & Emmett Till

They say it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Corolyn Bryant, of Mississippi, who died last week aged 88, I will make an exception. Good Riddance!

Emmett Till, was 14 years old in August 1955, when Bryant’s husband and another white friend abducted, tortured, and lynched him, in Money, Mississippi, because she claimed that he had whistled and grabbed her while she was working in the store that they owned. An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, for the murder of Emmett Till in September 1955. Both men later admitted to the killing in a paid interview in Look magazine, but never faced a retrial. Carolyn Bryant, admitted that her husband had brought Till to their house before killing him. Although Bryant is known to have lied about the incident, she never showed any remorse for the death of Emmett Till, who was from Chicago.

In August 1955, Emmett's mother, Mamie Bradley, had put her son on a train in Chicago so he could visit his cousins and great-uncle Moses Wright, in Money, Mississippi. Before his departure, Mamie had warned Emmett, to be "careful around white people." Being from Chicago, Emmett, knew nothing about the lynching’s and racism that were a feature of life in the rural South. He spent his days helping to pick cotton and swimming in the local river. Several days after his arrival, Emmett and his cousins drove to Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market, to buy snacks and candy.

One of the last living person's to have witnessed both the incident at the store and Emmett's abduction, was Emmett's cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. Parker says that nothing happened in the store, but he had concerns about Emmett's liking for practical jokes and whether he was using appropriate language for a black person in the rural South - "Yes, sir. No, sir." In his book, Parker recalled, "Emmett liked to make people laugh, and so he whistled", while Carolyn Bryant, then aged 21, was stood outside the door of the store. He said they were all stunned and added, "We could have died. If there was any way possible, we would have disappeared. We knew that he had violated Southern mores. That was not good at all. So we all made a beeline for the car."

What Bryant claimed to have taken place went much further. She said that Emmett had grabbed her hand and wrist, and had asked her out for a date. Several days later, Bryant and Milam drove to the house of Moses Wright in a Chevrolet pickup and dragged Emmett Till from his bed, and abducted him. Some witnesses believe Carolyn Bryant was also in the pickup. That was the last time that Parker ever saw his cousin Emmett Till alive. Emmett's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days later on 31st August. He had been tortured and shot and beaten beyond recognition. His teeth were missing and an ear had been cut off. An eye was also hanging out of its socket. Emmett was found with a cotton-gin fan attached to his neck with barbed wire. A film about the death of Emmett Till recently went on release in British cinemas and he was immortalised in song by Bob Dylan, in his ballad, 'The Death of Emmett Till'.

Laura Trevelyan denies family responsibility for Irish famine deaths.

 

Laura Trevelyan

The English civil servant Charles Edward Trevelyan, was in charge of famine relief in Ireland during the Great Hunger, brought about by the potato blight, in the mid-1840s. It's estimated that around 1 million people died of starvation and a further 2 million people were forced to emigrate.

The former BBC journalist, Laura Trevelyan, is a direct descendant of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan. He was her great, great, great-grandfather. After working for the BBC for thirty years, she left the corporation to become a full-time slavery reparations campaigner. The Trevelyan family recently agreed to donate more than £100,000 to the Caribbean island of Grenada, where they once owned around 1,000 slaves. When slavery was abolished in the 1830s, the Trevelyan family received £34,000 in official compensation, the equivalent of £3m in today's money. When Laura Trevelyan was asked why her family would pay compensation to Grenada over slavery and not to Ireland over the famine, she said her family had personally profited from the sale of sugar harvested by slaves, whereas, her ancestor, Charles Trevelyan, had been carrying out government policy. However, she said that if the Irish government felt that the family were responsible for the actions of their ancestor, they would have to consider it.

The journalist and Irish nationalist, John Mitchell, accused the British government of committing genocide in Ireland. He referred to the murderous effects of allowing the grain harvest of 1846 to be exported when people were experiencing hunger. The refusal of the British government to make fighting the famine a UK charge and the legislative decree of June 1847, that said that Irish ratepayers must bear all the expense of relieving the destitute. This led to clearances and evictions. Mitchell famously said that Providence had provided the potato blight but the English had provided the famine.

Ireland had been part of the Union since 1801, so it's people became subjects of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 1846, the former Irish Chief Secretary under Sir Robert Peel, said of Trevelyan, that he "knew as much about Ireland as his baby, if he has one." Although Charles Trevelyan was a civil servant and a Bible reading Protestant, he played a vital role in influencing Irish policy and he had the power of life or death over huge numbers of starving Irish people. A laissez-faire ideologue, Trevelyan ensured that there was to be no interference with food exports from Ireland and he reversed Sir Robert Peel's policy of grain shipments to Ireland. He actually wrote to Baring Brothers Bank, to cancel a ship load of Indian corn that was being sent as famine relief. Baring congratulated him on "the termination of his feeding efforts." He also sought to close down relief schemes believing that wages of nine to ten pence a day, were far too high. Men died of starvation while waiting for wages owed to them.

The English historian, A.J.P. Taylor compared Ireland in the 1840s, to Bergen Belsen and said that the "the English governing class" had the blood of "two million Irish people" on its hands. That the death toll was not higher, Taylor savagely remarked, "was not from want of trying." Charles Trevelyan, seemed to think that the famine was an act of Providence, a calamity that had been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.

Laura Trevelyan says that it was when she was Ireland covering the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement, that she first became aware of how odious the name Trevelyan was to many Irish people. She had people sing the ballad 'The Fields of Athenry' to her when they discovered her name. Martin McGuiness had said to her what a coincidence it was that the BBC had sent a Trevelyan to cover the negotiations. A member of Sinn Fein had asked her how she could be driving around south Armagh, when she had the blood of the Irish on her hands? Trevelyan says that she didn't understand what he was talking about. This led her to do research on Charles Trevelyan which culminated in her publishing the book, 'A Very British Family' in 2006.