People as possessions. Not even possessions. Things to be used. Passed around. Changed if not quite right instead of invested in.
Free trial. Won’t cost a penny. It should cost company to employ someone, that person then has at least some value. If it costs to employ then an employer has more reason to get the recruitment process right.
There is already a way for employers to ‘try before your hire’. (Someone at the DWP got a massive slap on the back for that one.) It’s called Temp-to-Permanent. Someone is employed through an employment agency on a temporary basis. If after three to six months everyone is happy, the employee is transferred from the employment of the agency and becomes a full member of the client company’s staff, subject to another six months probation and 2 years of being able to be given the sack for no reason hanging over them.
Why should a company get a free input, especially when it’s someones’ labour? Especially when it’s a company that doesn’t need help paying the bills? People reduced to serving the interests of corporations, rather than the other way round.
The State, whoever running it, is not running it for us, the people. They’re running it for their mates in the board room.
From the Guardian…
The true extent of the Labour government’s involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.
Previously secret papers that have been disclosed include a number implicating Tony Blair’s office in many of the events that are to be the subject of the judicial inquiry that David Cameron announced last week.
Among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.
Read the rest.
via TenPercent on Twitter
Update: By being on the ball, as usual *rolls eyes*, I missed this, the Guardians’ small library of documents. (via D-Notice)
I just had a look for Labours’ manifesto. As I typed Google suggested ‘Labour manifesto 2010’ so I went with that. A very poor show from Labour, I must say (click to enlarge) …
Nothing from Labour, who came in at seventh and a bit of a WIN for the Conservatives coming in with the front page of conservatives.com fourth and a link to the Telegraphs’ article about the Conservative manifesto in third place.
I didn’t get to hear or see Gordons’ speech today and being a lazy sod I haven’t really gone looking for it, but from what I have picked up is from here…
• Provide 250,000 free childcare places for two-year-olds.
• Delay the introduction of compulsory ID cards for British citizens.
• Provide a network of supervised homes for 16- and 17-year-old parents.
• Create up to 10,000 green job placements.
• Protect the schools budget.
• Hold a referendum on the alternative vote electoral system after the election.
• Remove hereditary peers in the House of Lords “once and for all”, in the next parliament.
• Give constituents the right to remove corrupt MPs.
• Increase the role of post offices in providing financial services.
So, 250k free childcare places for two year olds. Very good that will help a great deal for some people, but surely wouldn’t it be better to make it so people didn’t need free nursery places, either by working towards a situation where couples do not need have both of them working or by making it so people can afford to pay for their own childcare.
Delay the introduction of compulsory ID cards. Not abandon the idea but delay. It’s still on the cards, as it were. It’ll still gonna happen. It’s just not so subtle as in 1997* when Blair said Labour wouldn’t introduce university top-up/tuition fees and then in 2001* said that that promise was just for the previous parliament.
(*I might be 4 years early with this and it happened in 2001 and 2005)
Supervised home for young parents. ‘Nuff said here.
10,000 green job placements. The word ‘placements’ bothers me. If it was just jobs, fine, but ‘placements’ doesn’t sound very permanent. You used to get a work experience placement at school and then when you left school it was a YTS £40-a-week placement. Neither lasted long.
Protecting schools budgets. Everything else is going then.
Referendum on an alternative voting system. Good.
Remove hereditary peers. Wasn’t that in the 1997 election manifesto?
Recalling MPs. Another good one.
Same for Post Offices.
What is this about (also mentioned here)?
Brown promises 10,000 skilled internships. He wants young people ‘to embrace ambition and British enterprise’
Don’t interns work for nothing but expenses? Is that what Gordon’s promising? If it is, it’s setting the bar a bit low, isn’t it? He wants young people to embrace the ambition of getting a job that pays? Is that it?
I gather ‘change’ appeared a lot* in Gordons’ speech, but surely after twelve years of a government we should be at least on the right track (for the government) and not needing to change too much, otherwise what’s the last twelve years been spent doing?
(*link via qwghlm.co.uk)
Anyway, that’s it. Gordon’s on his way out whatever. Is it time for a proper revolution yet?
On Tuesday (5 May) George Monbiot publishes a rather good interview with Hazel Blears, accusing her of having rather flexible values and ideals with regard to her unflinching support of the Labour Party of over the last twelve years.
And as if by magic, between fiming and publishing Hazel has a piece critical of the government.
Whether she is positioning herself ready for a new leader, or even to try and nab the job herself, or just trying to prove George wrong, well, that depends on how cynical you are.
Update: I sent Grerge an email asking what the gap was between filiming and publishing. The reply I got said three weeks.
Anyone. It could’ve been anyone but them!
Labours propaganda outlet, labourlist has recruited the slimey shits Shillings to watch their back in the comments.
Manic has spotted it and seen a remarkable similarity in the accountability of the site to some more erm, prominent, bloggers.:
Now Draper is insisting that he is not accountable to me. So he accepts comments, but refuses accountability – and here I will remind you again that he learned what little he knows by watching Dale and Staines in action. Nowhere is this influence more obvious than in his stated policy that those who are unhappy about this state of affairs should essentially ‘get their own blogs’ and make their case there. In other words, if you’re not happy that your question was refused or shouted down at a public meeting, you’re invited to go outside and hold your own meeting. Nice.
Actually, they’re made for each other, Labour and Schillings. They’re both information and image control freaks in the pay of the capitalist classe
