Chippy Minton

Not Royal Mail, but I had a delivery from Amazon via a courier company that arrived at 11:15pm the other day. The knock on the door gave us a hell of a shock!

He was addressing fellow trade unionists so I don't think it's lacking in taste. As DJKQ points out, the TUC had a connection with those he was talking about.

OMG?talk about banging my head against a brick wall!!!! The march was not banned because of the EDL's policies!!! As for the assertion that "there is a growing problem with Islamification in this country," we'll just have to disagree on that. The EDL were born from the football casual/hoolie culture - their leader is a convicted football hooligan - it's not just a violent minority. I stand by my statement that they are low life scum.

acm - you misunderstand. The march was banned because of fears over violence - nothing to do with views or "concerns" the EDL have about Islam.

The EDL (or murderers, child-molsters or neo-nazis) aren't an entire section of society. They are, thankfully, just a few thousand people and therefore for me, your analogy with Muslims or black people doesn't stack-up. The behavior of EDL isn't just a "small minority" - as a percentage, it is a very large number of them - that is the point.

How ridiculous! As far as I know I don't know any murders, child-molesters or neo-nazis but I think they are all "low life scum". I hope I'm not just as bad. I don't know any EDL, but they are low life scum.

Well may be I misunderstood you, but you accused me of 'seeking to deprive someone you disagree politically with those same rights' which I don't. I agree entirely that if the police recommend banning marches from students, anti-globalisation protesters etc because they fear violence then they should be banned. As far as I know this hasn't happened though.

To be clear, the march wasn't banned because I, the government or anyone else disagreed with the EDL's politics. It was banned because the police feared it would lead to violence and disorder and the government wanted to ensure local communities and property were protected.

I don't believe I have taken it out of context - I find your "naughty children" comparison offensive. Yes, I would deprive the EDL of their "right" to march through Tower Hamlets not because I don't believe in human right, but because the EDL don't just have their "fair share" of nutters - it is an ultra-right wing, violent organisation that seeks to whip up hatred and stir up tensions within communities. Thankfully it's a view shared by the government, police and the tens of thousands that registered their objections as well. As for my website as you put it, the Hope Not Hate organisation and its website led the campaign and petition against the EDL march and a huge slice of credit needs to go to it for the decision to implement the ban. I doubt the EDL appreciates it. Finally, I disagree entirely that the right strategy to adopt with regard to the EDL is to ignore them.

Loz - I have been on many, many marches backing many, many causes including the anti-Criminal Justice Bill in the 90s that aimed to reduce human rights and only one of which was a union march (the march for alternative earlier this year). I just find it disgusting you compare the EDL to "small children being naughty." If you are unaware of exactly the sort of people you think are "being naughty" you should read this http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/1341/the-guns-of-the-edl

The EDL are most definitely not "like a small child being naughty" ! They are utterly vile extremist racists and have a leader that predicts a Norway-style massacre here within five years. It won't happen, but I hope their marches are banned indefinitely, not just for 30 days.

James - who were the other two schools and what was their response?

Sorry to hear this. This may help http://www.unitetheunion.org/pdf/Redundancy%20%20pdf%20for%20web%20UN0106.pdf Good luck

Agreed Loz. 38 Degrees undoubtedly support some really worthy issues and given they are run literally by a handful of people are a great organisation, but I sometimes think they join the party late! The save the forests campaign is a good example of this. The NOTW campaign was everywhere - all sides united. This fun graphic shows how over half a million tweets with the hashtag #notw were sent over a four day period on Twitter alone http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/interactive/2011/jul/13/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-twitter?INTCMP=SRCH It defiantly wasn't just 38 Degrees Wot Won It!

Why were the "union barons" greedy? The strike wasn't about pay - it was about pit closures and the consequent jobs losses. Also, what other barons are you referring to? The NUM/Scargill were effectively out on their own with no support from the rest of the trade union movement - it was one the reasons why the miners were defeated.

There's a family of three foxes living a couple of gardens over and we have the associated problem of them coming in our garden crapping everywhere and ripping up neighbours' rubbish bags all over the place. Anyone got any suggestions of how to stop them coming in? I've already bought an ultrasonic repeller thing but it doesn't work!

What exactly did you expect? If your life continued as normal presumably you work in the private sector, didn't have to go and sign on, go on holiday, your kids are taught by a teacher that is either not in a union or is in the NASUWT etc. etc but there were plenty of people who's stories were reported in the press and on TV that did seemed to be affected. So that means two thirds of schools were affected right? So if you then consider the NASUWT, which represents over a third of teachers, wasn't on strike I'd say that the disruption yesterday had about as much impact as any of the striking unions could have planned.

Maude got mauled by Evan Davies on the Today Programme so no surprise there. Listen again here, especially the last five mins http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9526000/9526631.stm

OK, I get what you mean, although I also think it's a tricky business defining "essential services" and I disagree that teachers should not be allowed to exercise their right to strike. Whilst we're onto bullets, here's a couple to consider: ⋄ The average teacher's pension is ?10,275 ⋄ The average civil servant's pension is ?5,023 Not really what I would consider massive pensions!

Brendan - what do you mean by "professionals." Is this white collar workers or would you include the skilled working class?

hmmm....do you also object to your council tax paying for street lighting on Frien Road even though you don't live there?

AHHHH....why is there this notion that "if I can't have it, why should they"? It's ridiculous! Why level down? I've had to increase my pension contributions by four per cent over the last two years - this pissed me off but it doesn't make me wish everyone else should get hammered as well. Private sector pensions are crap and they will never get better whilst employers use the example of public sector pensions being crap as well. What the government is doing comes on top of changes negotiated under Labour that reduced the value of public sector pensions by 10 per cent through a range of changes - especially under so-called ?cap and share?, members agreed to first share ? and then fully bear ? the costs of any unexpected increase in longevity. The impact of this, according to the National Audit Office is: "In addition to saving significant sums of money, the changes are projected to stabilise costs in the long-term around their current level as a proportion of GDP." And the RPI/CPI change will further reduce the value of public service pensions by 15%. Cameron claims the system will go broke but this chart in the Hutton Report shows that public service pensions payments will decline as a share of GDP before any of the changes proposed in Hutton bite. So even before Hutton, public sector pensions had been made sustainable. I'll be supporting not only the teachers, but all the public sector workers tomorrow. Edited to try and get the picture inserted :-$

Hi James, Back to the biodegradable bags thing and a bit of anecdotal evidence you may want to feedback. I reckon since we've been given the handleless bags, I estimate we use about a third more of them per week because you can't fill them as much due to them being harder to tie up if full. Bags with handles may be that smidgen more expensive, but for us we'd use a lot less of them. CM

Just got my application submitted - 35min process and lots of refreshing

LU would have deducted a whole shift's pay even if they only went on strike for one hour although the 9pm-3am Sunday night-Monday morning wouldn't have exactly caused alot of pain for commuters.