Richard Hawley

Funny how they can give you a day off for the Royal Wedding and it costs nothing but when we go on strike to defend our pensions, us public sector workers have suddenly cost the country half a billion quid.
Just back from my picket line, cold and hungry but proud that people are standing up to these money grabbing monsters.

Well done Helen

I didn't picket today because I can't stand for very long at all now.

It's always curious the priorities that are affordable and those that are "wrecking the country". It's clear who have wrecked the country and they aren't public services staff.

I am also getting sick and tired of the "well I haven't got a pension so it's not fair". It's a disgrace what has happended to many pensions in the private sector, the theft of pension funds and the lack of care for employees. Why on earth do people who have to work for a living, whoever they are employed by have to evaluate pensions in terms of the lowest common denominator, i.e. the one that absolves any responsibility for employees and will rely on the state to make up the difference in years to come?

When filthy rich people pay all their taxes and when bankers bonuses and pay rates are returned to more natural levels, then it might be time to review how the rest of us get on.

The MPs have robbed this country blind and very little has changed, they whine about voting figures yet not one person put their cross on the ballot paper for Coalition Government, with a Tory plan.

Rant over.....well still waiting for Steve Bruce to get sacked so have plenty of ire on other topics but will spare you.

I've just got back from the meeting in sheffield lovely to see so many people there .sore feet now though!

I have sore feet and I'm still freezing!

Anyway, was asked to contribute to a phone in on Radio London with Vanessa Feltz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00lrmx5

I'm the last person on, just before she interviews Robert Elms. Sound like a prick but tried my best!

Good work Helen!

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Mike Harding just shared this on Facebook -

"A Banker, a School Teacher, a Tory MP and a Daily Mail reader are sat around a table. In front of them is a plate, on which there are ten biscuits. The Banker scoffs nine of the biscuits, then the Tory turns to the Daily Mail reader and whispers in his ear "watch out, that teacher is after your biscuit"."

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I was asked to go on Calender ( local tv) when I was at the meeting this morning but got my friend from school to do it - he is much more articulate than me - they obviously liked him as they showed his interview twice.

Heard that joke a while ago its so bang on,the strike was very heartening for me,I thought that kind of will and determination had gone from our people..........I was wrong hope you win. X

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now,then!

It is a good joke! I had a few of the Daily Mail crew having a pop yesterday, one of them telling me and the woman I was with to: Get off our arses and do some work for a change.

Unfortunately for him, the woman who I was with is a school cook, who would no doubt love the chance to sit on her arse, but her job involves getting to the kitchen at 7am, where she is on her feet without a real break until 2! Good job the geezer was in a van or I think he might have experienced first hand some of the techniques she uses in the kitchen but on his face!

And the will and determination is very much here. According to all the punters, we've got ten more years of this to come and it'll get much worse before it gets better. People have a decision to make about how they want to deal with that – give in and allow them to turn us into the US or fight for a different way of organising society from the disaster we have now. I was really heartened by yesterday because it showed that most people just don't believe the hype. xx

What a cheek! You should have slapped them.

I was playing some music down at the St. Pauls Occupy protest a fortnight ago and my band were just about to play when this woman marches up and asked if any of us have got a job. "I've had a job since I was 16" she told us. Then she gave us some abuse about disturbing the peace. I was about to reason with her and explain why we were there and what we were doing when our washboard player called her an "insidious creep" and she walked off looking like she'd been slapped round the face. It was brilliant. He said afterwards that all his life he's felt like an insidious creep and he reckoned maybe she'd never considered that she might be one and it was time to think about it.

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I didn't picket but went to the Rally in the town centre where I work. There were a couple of good speakers and plenty of noise was made to mark European Day of Action. I was proud to stand there with fellow public workers.

Our bin didn't get emptied, good for the binmen.

Helen, that was an excellent interview, well done.

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Love is so hard to find
And even harder to define

I went up to Belfast to help out. It was a brilliant and lively march, everyone I spoke to was keen to escalate the protest over the next while. Another bonus was the fact that there was no sectarian presence on the march. The march from the protestant area linked up with the one from the catholic one, which was something I didn't pick up on until I was told afterwards. Unfortunately there is massive passivity down here in the south. Appallingly enough the leader of the largest union in the republic was there and when asked when to expect suck a strike in Dublin he said 'the appetite isn't there'. Complete careerist prick, he's never put the question to the union members.

(A trivial point - I've been in the SWP for 10 years and it's the first time I went on an anti-tory protest. )

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