Bisexual? Maybe I am! Maybe I aren't!

Is it the categorisation that dare not speak its name?

 

TALK about being catty! Tom Daley's claim that 'Of course I still fancy girls', has certaily brought on the heavy mob from the gay and lesbian community.

 

Leaning back against Union Jack pillows, Mr Daley on YouTube continued: 'But, I mean, right now I'm dating a guy, and couldn't be happier.'

 

First of all it was all sweetness and light from the gay community, after all Daley is a 19-year-old British Olympic diver announcing that he was dating a man. But then people started to wonder: Was it a cop-out or a ploy to hang on to his fans? Or was he just being greedy, as some joked?

 

According to the International Herald Tribune today: 'Whatever the answer, Mr. Daley's disclosure reignited a delicate conversation within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or L.G.B.T., community. Bisexuality, like chronic fatigue syndrome, is often assumed to be imaginary by those on the outside. The stereotypes abound: bisexuals are promiscuous, lying or in denial. They are gay men who can't yet admit that they are gay, or "lesbians intil graduation," sowing wild oats before they find husbands.'

 

Lisa Diamond, a professor at the University of Utah who studies sex orientation, said:

'The reactions that you're seeing are classic in terms of people not believing that bisexuality really exists, feeling that it's a transitional stage or a form of being in the closet.' It seems that only a few celebrities have embraced the term 'bi-sexual'.

 

Cynthia Nixon, who married a woman after having children with a man, told The Daily Beast in 2012: 'I don't pull out the "bisexual" word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.'

 

Amen!

 

'Bi-sexual' is it the label or categorisation that 'dare not speak its name'?

The Olympics, London & the Militarised State

TODAY we learn that G4S can't supply 10,000 security staff for the Olympics as planned, and that the Home Secretary, Theresa May has had to plead with the Ministry of Defence to let her have thousands more service personnel to do the job as security-men at the London 2012 Games.  I wonder what the squaddies are saying about that?

Ironically, only last Friday in the Herald Tribune, Jules Boykoff and Alan Tomlinson were writing about the International Olympic Committee (ICO):  'Most worrisome, perhaps, is that the I.C.O. creates perverse incentives for security officials in host cities to overspend and militarize public space.  The I.C.O. tends to look kindly on bids that assure security, and host cities too often use the Games as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stock police warehouses with the best weapons money can buy.'

Mr. Boykoff and Mr. Tomlinson further say visitors to London 'would be forgiven for thinking they had dropped in on a military convention.'  They write:  'Helicopters, fighter jets and bomb-disposal units will be at the ready.'  Before this recent mishap by G4S about 13,500 British military personnel were expected to be on patrol, that would be 4,000 more than currently serving in Afghanistan.  Now, it seems, that figure will have to be revised upwards.

Admittedly, the Government are right to be concerned to protect our capital city and the Games, but as Boykoff and Tomlinson say 'there is such a thing as excess - and surveillance and weaponry are not a panacea.'  Symbolically, having London presenting an image of a militarised state is is hardly conducive to the Olympic ideals of peace and understanding.  These critics suggest that today it is the growing size of the Games that is the problem - 'Gigantism' - and argue that competitions 'drenched in privilege, like the equestrian events, should be ditched' as should 'pseudo-historuical events like Greco-Roman wrestling' and events with high start-up costs should be changed for ones needing less resources like tug-on-war and running events 'like trail running and cross-country'.




 

Doing Business in the Southern Olympics

LAST Friday in the Herald Tribune, Jules Boykoff and Alan Tomlinson wrote:  'Although the I.O.C. (International Olympic Committee) has been periodically tarnished by scandal - usually involving the bribing and illegitimate wooing of delegates - those embarrassments divert us from a deeper problem:  The organisation is elitist, domineering and crassly commercial at its core.'   The revival of the Olympics by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in the 1890s was down to an assembly of princes, barons, counts and lords to help co-ordinate the Games.  It seems that in the present crop of 105 I.O.C. members still have a good chunk of royalty including Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Prince Nawaf Faisal Fahd Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. 

Then there is the commercial end of the Games, Mr. Boykoff and Tomlinson write:  'The I.O.C. has turned the Olympics into a commercial bonanza.  In London, more than 250 miles of V.I.P. traffic lanes are reserved not just for athletes and I.O.C. luminaries but also for corporate sponsors.  Even the signature torch relay has been commercialized:  The I.O.C. and its corporate partners snapped up 10% of the torchbearer slots for I.O.C. stakeholders and members of the commercial sponsors' information technology and marketing staffs.  Michael R. Payne, a former director for the committee, has called the Olympics "the world's longest commercial".'

Good business for some of these folk down South!

Yesterday's Blacklist Olympics Protest

Frank Morris (Picture: Mick Holder)

Supporters of blacklisted worker Frank Morris stopped the transport going into one of the main entrances to the Olympics site in Hackney this morning (Sunday 10th, April).

Frank was sacked and threatened with violence at the Olympics site after blowing the whistle on the use of an illegal blacklist of trade union members by the multi-national construction companies on the project.

For many more pix - follow the Blacklist Support Group facebook page

Blacklist Support Group

Anti-blacklist demo targets Olympic site

By Rory, from the Blacklist Blog:

LAST TUESDAY, NO TRUCK Anti-blacklist protesters stopped traffic entering the Olympics site, in a protest against the dismissal of whistleblower Frank Morris.

Anti-blacklist protesters caused chaos outside London’s Olympic Park this week when they stopped deliveries getting onto the site for more than an hour. Traffic ground to a halt in Pudding Mill Lane on 1 March as the demonstrators from the Blacklist Support Group crossed continually a zebra crossing near the site gates. Traffic disruption is a common and very effective union protest tactic in the US, but is new to the UK.

The protesters were supporting an RMT member who was recently removed from the job. Enfield-based electrician Frank Morris was shifted from his job at the prestigious media centre at the Olympic site after blowing the whistle on the use of an illegal blacklist on the construction project.

His dismissal by subcontractor Daletech Services followed weeks of intimidation and threats of violence by members of senior management after he had raised concerns about the dismissal of a co-worker.

The co-worker was dismissed from the Olympic Media Centre being built by Skanska and Carillion after his name appeared on a blacklist of trade union members, many of whom were targeted for their health and safety activities. After Morris raised concerns about this illegal practice, he says he was victimised, bullied and threatened with violence by senior management to the point that he had to call the police for his own protection before finally being dismissed.

RMT is backing his unfair dismissal claim to an industrial tribunal. RMT union official Steve Hedley commented: “In over 25 years representing workers I have never seen such a blatant stitch up, victimisation and even threats of violence to a union activist whose only ‘crime’ was to expose an illegal blacklist operating on the Olympic site.”

Site worker Paul Tattersfield has become the latest worker to win a blacklisting tribunal. It found Balfour Beatty Engineering Services Ltd has refused him employment because he was on The Consulting Association blacklist. The company is known to have been a major support of the covert blacklisting operation.
The tribunal awarded him just under £24,000 including loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages.

Not So Discrete Survival of Building Site Blacklisting

PROTEST 

STOP BLACKLISTING ON OLYMPICS 
RE-INSTATE FRANK MORRIS

7am Tuesday 1st March

Pudding Mill Lane DLR Station

Stratford

ENFIELD based electrician Frank Morris has been sacked from working on the prestigious Media Centre at the Olympics after blowing the whistle on the use of an illegal blacklist on the construction project.

Frank's dismissal by Daletech Services followed weeks of intimidation and threats of violence by members of senior management after Frank Morris had raised concerns about the dismissal of a co-worker. The co-worker was dismissed from the Olympics Media Centre being built by Skanska and Carillion after his name appeared on a blacklist of trade union members. Frank raised concerns about this illegal practice and was victimised, bullied, threatened with violence by senior management to the point that Frank had to call the police for his own protection before finally being dismissed.

The protest is outside the prestige Olympic Media Centre site - the Skanska site where the blacklisting took place - which is in Pudding Mill Lane - adjacent to Pudding Mill DLR and in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium.

Skanska and Carillion were two of the major building contractors exposed for using an illegal blacklist of trade union members following a raid on the premises of the Consulting Association by the government's Information Commissioners Office in 2009. The Consulting Association collated a secret database of trade union members on behalf of 44 multi-national construction firms who funded, supplied information and directed the workings of the blacklist. The Consulting association database was declared illegal following a successful prosecution in 2009. Invoices seized during the raid show that Skanska alone paid over £28,000 a year to use the blacklist. Skanska have conceded that 30 of their senior managers participated in the Consulting Association operation. There are currently numerous Employment Tribunal cases against Skanska, Carillion and Daletech because of the blacklisting scandal.

John McDonnell MP called the Consulting Association scandal "the worst case of organised human rights abuse ever in the UK". It seems that the illegal practice is still alive and well on the most high-profile building project in the world.

Below are Frank Morris' own words on the matter:

'When I started August 2010 at the Olympic I was overjoyed, I secured a job at the Media Centre for Daletech Services who were contracted to Skanska with Carillion being main contractor. I brought into the Olympic dream and proud that I could be part of building of it. I was also guaranteeing myself a reasonable weekly wage in the worst recession since the great depression which was a lifeline to me and my family.

'Late last year, a fellow electrician was dismissed from site, this worker had an impeccable work record; 100% attendance and punctuality, he was earning a productivity bonus which meant he was achieving over and above his daily work target and he had an impeccable disciplinary record. I was in complete shock the project was in mid flow we were all looking at a minimum of at least 6 months work and the contractor we were working for seemed to have plenty of work in the pipeline for 2011.

'Later that same day, I was speaking to my electrical supervisor and asked what was the reason behind the dismissal. The reply was astonishing, he stated he was dismissed because his name has come up on a list that he was a union man and a known troublemaker. My electrical supervisor confirmed this again the following day. The other electrician had previously been a shop steward on another London construction project.

'I passed on this information to the sacked electrician and his trade union, so he could understand the real reason for his dismissal. During the subsequent appeal hearing, the name of the electrical supervisor in question and the conversation I had previously recalled was divulged. That was the end of my Olympic experience.

'I was immediately removed of site and transferred to Belmarsh Prison extension still working for Daletech Services with Skanska this time were the main contractor. I was forced to work in isolation (in contravention of the main contractors health and safety procedures), site management waged a campaign of intimidation and bullying against me. On 16th December 2010, I had to call the police and ask for protection as a senor electrical engineer threatened me with violence; he said was going to follow me off the site and assault me. I tried my best to resolve the issues using the company grievance procedure. For the next 6 weeks, I suffered daily examples of intimidation by site management. If I could of found another job at any time, I would of resigned: the fact was, I could not afford to leave.

'On 14th February 2011, the management told me to attend a disciplinary hearing and I was sacked. I had previously worked on numerous railway projects and was represented at the hearing by Steve Hedley (RMT union official). I was not sacked because of poor workmanship or lateness but because I raised concerns about the use of an illegal blacklist. My union is representing me in an Employment Tribunal claim. I am now unemployed.'

Steve Hedley RMT Official says:

'In over 25 years representing workers, I have never seen such a blatant stitch up victimisation and even threats of violence to a union activist who's only "crime" was to expose an illegal blacklist operating on the Olympic site. The disciplinary hearing was a farce with management dismissing a threat to our member made by his site manager of "come outside and sort this out man to man" despite the manager putting these very words in his own witness statement.'

Contact info. to follow up story:

Frank Morris 07779 782904
Steve Hedley (RMT) 07545 530526

More information on blacklistsg@googlemail.com
www.hazards.org/blacklistblog
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUMYCP9SnLM