"Horse whipping cart... cart pushing man...

'Project Focus'

I like the Dutch band Focus. Their 1971 album Focus II is a bit of a classic. As I yodelled my way through  'Sylvia' off their eponymous third opus, I pondered over the most recent nom de possible sackings as reported in the Manchester Evening News and the Times Higher, I made a corporate decision. As the contents of the document are in the public domain, I concurred with me that it's most definitely in the public interest that a chap publishes this document in its entirety. Staff, students and the public have a right to know.

Oh dear...

Project Axeroom?

UCU regional official Martyn Moss is quoted as saying that:

“The University of Salford already has the unenviable tag as Britain’s most prolific university for axing staff...  This damaging memo paints the university in a callous and uncaring light. It appears to have no regard for either its hardworking [sic] staff or students making potentially the biggest decisions of their lives. We are really disappointed the university has ignored the unions and pursued such a damaging approach.”

Tu t'es fait virer, toi? 

The article in the Times Higher goes on to quote a section of the document:

"Under a heading of risk, the document says of the unions: “Strike action a high possibility. Will certainly fan the flames via the media.”

The question has to be asked, is the above a realistic appraisal? Is strike action up there in the gods in the list of possibilities? Let's consider the evidence. The THE reports that this is the TWELFTH round of job cuts in eighteen months. Now according to my GCSE in maths and some corner-of-penis calculations, the Salford branch of the UCU has engaged in ONE day of strike action in response to this local 'jobs slaughter' over the last EIGHTEEN months. It's an encouraging start. I decided to develop my mathematical skill set further. Could the the prospect of Ms Sheehy leading 'the troops' over the barricades be easily increased by a ratio of 2:1 thereby inversely raising the disproportionately of lacklustre strike action from 0.055 (1/18) of a day of strike action for a single month to the almost unheard of heights of 0.111(2/18) to two days in eighteen months? Moreover, did my calculations and the threat of another SINGULAR day of strike action have the potential to imbue across seignorial gussets the human equivalent of 'dog bottom' or at least 'leafy Autumn camouflage'? I wasn't sure.

Will Hall's Saxon shield wall
hold or will he resign?

The cloth according to cutly

The previous Graves-Hall strategy of improving the student experience by spending vast sums on new prestigious buildings is clearly not having the desired outcome. Having been a student and knocked around with many thousands of them at Salford in the past, as well as having taught a good few, when asked what they want, the standard reply was smaller lecture groups, smaller tuition groups, investment in better libraries including more staff and more books. They'd also make the outrageous demand for more one-on-one time between tutors and students. I don't recall a single student ever saying to me "Duke you hair-faced buffoon, we clearly need more quality one-on-one time with consultants, a fully stocked wet room for senior managers, and regular refits of the Ole Fire station with concomitant chauffeur-driven cars." It's not rocket science.

We do have victories sometimes you know?

Sometimes it appears that your employer has all the cards stacked in his favour. When a group of workers face bullying and the threat of redundancies as well as having the Angel of D'eath pass regularly over their thresholds, it can be rather demoralising. It can readily imbue within a group of workers the idea that their bosses are hegemonic and that they'll always win. I mused for the moment on the manner in which I had without any support whatsoever from my own union, fought back over three long years against Hall, Graves* and the Chair of University Council Alan Mawson. Between them, according to a report in the Manchester Evening News, they decided to bypass the University Council and launch an expensive libel action using University money, 'something the institution now accepts was wrong'. It was expensive, costing somewhere in the region of £150,000 to stifle criticism of er... Hall and Graves. The strategy of filling lawyers mouths with gold (caution libel lawyers it's meant to be an euphemism) and choosing the terrain of England's libel courts to mount their attack disastrously backfired. Their ill-conceived and ill-advised case was thrown out at a preliminary stage by possibly the most eminent libel judge in the country. They had no case. In short I won.

The thinking chap

But the above got me to thinking, which as regular readers of this blog will know is nearly always a bad thing. Firstly, will Hall, Graves and Mawson now reimburse the money they spent on their libel claim to the University prior to announcing further job cuts?  And lastly, if I could beat them, surely a well-funded union branch at Salford could rally its members to give Hall et al another bloody nose? They could firstly refuse to negotiate about any matter to do with jobs or anything else with Executive Head of HR Keith Watkinson. They could do this because he admitted that he made up allegations that I had sexually harassed and criminally stalked a female member of staff, to gain access to my work computer, emails and file store in 2009. He admitted he did this on oath in my employment tribunal in 2011. It's not the sort of behaviour we should expect from someone negotiating over peoples' jobs and futures. The President of the UCU has had this information for some time yet has, as far as I'm aware, not acted upon it. Apart from a disciplinary investigation to be initiated by Hall against Watkinson over this serious matter, I still await a full apology from Martin Hall for Watkinson's libel against me and the stress it caused my family and myself. Hall should do the honourable thing. He should resign.

Apologise for  alleging you're a sexual harasser and criminal
stalker and therefore damaging your reputation?
Never you vile cur!

A glimmer of hope?

Feeling optimistic, I read the invitation to UCU members to attend the 'Protect the Front Line' meeting scheduled for 8th May 2013 at 12:45. Yes, the email appeared steep'd in the heady aplomb more usually associated with a car factory in the West Midlands in the 1970s. It reeked of confidence. Even the most demure statistical obscurantist with a penchant for underestimation would feel the need to lay out at least £12.99 on a bottle of Aldi's bubble-imbued finest as the UCU begin at last their long campaign to roll back the "damaging approach" of the University.

What did it for me was the heavy irony that permeated the final sentence: 'A light lunch will be provided'. I breathed a sigh of relief, content that my union and jobs of many former colleagues were in safe hands.

Notes and Resources

* Where is Dr Graves now? If any person wishes to further a cause and provide any evidence as to the whereabouts and details surrounding Dr Graves continuing lack of presence at the University of Salford, please feel free to send to the email address below. As usual, all sources of information (names) will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Author's request: If Martin Hall would like to supply this author with his revised Strategic Vision or Strategic Plan, we'd be happy to explore it over the coming weeks in the lead up to the 'controversial announcement' on June 5th. 

Author's second request: If Martin Hall would like to supply an apology for the actions and defamatory allegations made by Keith Watkinson, I'd be more than happy to publish such apology on this blog!

Usual disclaimer: This work is and expression of opinion on a matter of public interest and contains the opinions of the author. It is intended to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents, photos and video images herein is to provide humour and accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing or Fair Use. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested (email below). The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. Email garypaulduke@gmail.com

The Lido Shuffle revisited

It was with some unbounded glee that I read THE article in Wednesday's Manchester Evening News. And it got me to a thinking, which regular readers of this blog will know is nearly always a bad thing. First thing first. Some might be surprised to learn that Hall and 'Five Lane' Graves have decided to seek permission to appeal the decision of the Honourable Mr Justice Eady in the Court of Appeal. Mr Justice Eady is probably the most distinguished and eminent senior libel judge in England. I have submitted my rebuttal.

Reputational damage?

The libel claim launched by the dynamic duo was premised upon protecting the reputation of the University which Hall and Graves alleged I had damaged through my online scribblings. Mr Justice Eady was quite clear and agreed with me that the libel claim as laid out by Ian Austin acting for the University, demonstrated no tort against the University. Readers may recall that Mr Austin sat on the University governing body and chaired their Audit Committee at the launching of the proceedings in the High Court. From the perspective of the University, this was a real shame because quite a considerable sum of University money was spent on legal fees for a case that was thrown out be a senior High Court judge AT A PRELIMINARY STAGE! Who, I wondered, would be footing the bill for this appeal: Hall and 'Five Lane'? Or would it be the University? Maybe the Salford UCU President Chris Sheehy would like to follow this one up with Vice Chancellor Hall in light of the recent attacks on staff redundancy payments and pay protection rights?

Information is a wonderful thing

On to the meatus of the matter. As luck would have it, they've just released information showing the costs so far of their High Court reputation protecting spendings. They currently stand at around £150,000 including VAT. Yes £150,000 spent to be cast out of the courts AT A PRELIMINARY STAGE! It appears that the vast bulk of this money was paid to legal firms for whom Mr Austin was working. Indeed a rather sizeable sum was paid to Heatons LLP. Mr Austin is currently a partner for this firm. Readers might also note that as evidenced by Heatons' website, at the date of publication of this article Mr Austin is still advertised as being the Chair of the Audit Committee at Salford and on the University governing body. According to the University's website,  he isn't.

Who worked for Halliwells LLP, HBJ Gately Wareing
(Manchester) LLP and Heatons LLP? Answers
on a postcard please

What price the reputation now?

I posed a question to myself. And I liked the answer. I re-read the report in the paper. It's alleged that a similar incident happened prior to this most recent altercation. It was serious enough for the police to be involved. I then mulled over what is alleged to have occurred between Graves and A.N.Other in the vicinity of the University swimming pool, adjacent to the water within the deep and heady miasma of the chlorine. I then drew a link between the spending of somewhere in the region of £150,000 and the recent removal of Graves from University grounds and the concomitant investigation against this less-than-lacklustre-libel-launcher. I then  factored in the most recent 'a seeking of permission to appeal the decision of Eady J' to the Court of Appeal by Hall and Graves in order to continue to protect the reputation of the University. Finally, I cross-referenced all of this against the report in the Manchester Evening News. This I managed to achieve with simple tools: an old buff-ended Crayola crayon covered in deep settee fluff, my eyes and a wizened Rizla. I fed this raw data into the REPUTOMETER. What sort of results would manifest themselves I wondered? I was worried. I didn't hang around to find out.

Maybe I should start my letter to Professor Hall 'what price the University's reputation now?'

Notes and Resources 

Usual disclaimer: This work is and expression of opinion on a matter of public interest and contains the opinions of the author. It is intended to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents, photos and video images herein is to provide humour and accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing or Fair Use. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested (email below). The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. Email garypaulduke@gmail.com

An appeal, Mr Justice Eady and the obvious benefits of Betamax over VHS

Just to prove that a certain chap of some facial discomfiture has not been making this up for the last (nearly) three years,  the die has inexorably been cast. At 10:30 am on Monday 28th January 2013, in Court 13 in the Court of Appeal itself within the Royal Courts of Justice, a whisker-sodden sc'undrel's appeal is being heard before the esteemed Mr Justice Eady. 

Is there a public interest?

The overriding argument behind this appeal is to invite the Court to decide that there is no public interest in allowing a public authority such as a state funded university to sue in defamation, in this case libel. Readers may recall the Derbyshire Principle. Should a public authority be able to sue for libel? I've argued in court that it's a tad hostile to something known in the freedoms trade as 'freedom of expression'. How much? Well get your foot rules out and measure this: the Rat Catchers of the Sewers website has been unavailable to the public because of this claim since April/May 2010. Nope... no injunction has been served on this tweed-wearer so far. It's been achieved through a simple mechanism known among the libel fraternity as the 'chilling effect'. It's rather effective. Let's look at a hypothetical ramification if a university as a public authority is allowed to sue in defamation.

Hypothetical Ramification #5 - it's not on the White Album

You are an employee of a public authority. This public authority has itself published surveys that show senior managers are responsible for significant levels of staff bullying and what a reasonable person might describe as extraordinary levels of harassment. You're a rep in your trade union and decide to speak out about your own experiences and the experiences of members of your union. You decide to raise them at a forthcoming lunchtime public union meeting. You read in the press that your employer - the public authority - has decided to sue one of your members for libel. You shiver.

A much-valued Sony Betamax in happier days,
taking in some much needed Vitamin D

Legal representation - open to everyone regardless of ability to pay

Now you're a principled person. You want to do right by your members. Yet there's a problem. You can't get Legal Aid for defending against defamation claims. So you decide to lodge your pride and joy - a 1982 technically superior Betamax video cassette recorder (with an unaligned but recently degaussed playback/record head) with your local 'Your Stuff to Cash Transformer'.  You receive an almost kingly ransom of £12.30 and wonder why staff are pissing themselves in paroxysms as you leave the 'shop'. After checking over the health of your current account through the wizardry of modern online banking techniques, you decide that as your overdraft doesn't extend to several hundreds of thousands of pounds for lining the pockets of the legal profession, you might be better served keeping your gob shut and not standing for re-election next year as union rep. It's an employer's dream strategy and it's only gone and ruddy well worked. Soon word gets round, and across the country the fear sets in. Everyone's terrified that there might be a management stooge in their union meetings with a concealed digital voice recorder. Collectively they shudder at the thought of that Pre-Action Protocol dropping through their letter boxes.

Back to the events of tomorrow

Deputy Vice Chancellor Graves and Professor Hall have for this appeal, decided to secure the services of  Counsel in the shape of one Mr Justin Rushbrooke. I'm told he's very good indeed. I wonder how much his services are costing? It's likely that former Chair of Audit for Salford University governing council Ian Austin will be there in his legal capacity representing the University. I wonder how much his services have cost so far throughout this whole process?

I as usual, will be representing myself.

Notes and Resources

Before considering taking legal action in the form of a libel claim, all the above has been asserted in open court, so there!

Usual disclaimer: This work is and expression of opinion on a matter of public interest and contains the opinions of the author. It is intended to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents, photos and video images herein is to provide humour and accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing or Fair Use. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested (email below). 

 The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. Email garypaulduke@gmail.com

My dear chap it doesn't just happen in Egypt - Join the picket lines this week!

Don't stay at home - why you shold join the picket lines!

This week and next will see UCU members in universities and colleges across the UK (March 24th in England) striking against attacks by the employers on pensions. Today lecturers in Scotland took strike action and lecturers in Wales are striking tomorrow (18th March). Vagrants have learned that lecturers at Warwick University were also peopling the picket lines today to defend their pensions and jobs. Why should lecturers strike? The fight for decent pensions is not some sort of abstract disagreement between employers and the UCU. Pensions are deferred pay. They're not gold plated. Gold plated pensions tend to inhabit the gilded corridors traversed by the likes of unelected bankers, Vice Chancellors and the CEOs of large concerns. Thus despite what BBC newsreaders and the Tories would have us believe pensions are an entitlement and not gifted to us by overly generous bosses. 

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Staff at colleges and universities across the UK will be out on strike on Thursday 24 March in an unprecedented level of action across the further and higher education sectors. The attacks on staff's pensions, pay and job security have created real anger throughout the sector and instead of burying their heads in the sand the employers need to respond urgently to UCU's attempts to negotiate.'

The scales of justice weighed heavily in favour of
strike action by judges in France earlier this February 

Democracy from below and the importance of collective action

Staff at University of Salford will also be on strike on the 22nd of March. The Vagrants are pleased that Vice Chancellor Martin Hall has emailed staff in order to reaffirm that democracy is alive and kicking at the University of Salford. He informs us that the majority of those who participated in the recent ballot for industrial action voted for strike action. Like this Vagrant, Professor Hall has a clear commitment to the concept of liberal democracy and the notion of majority rule. It is indeed heartening to see university employees actively engaging in the grass roots participatory democracy within the union particularly when it centres on such important issues such as pensions, pay and jobs.

Deepening our democracy

But this democracy shouldn't cease the moment you've placed your cross on the ballot paper. UCU members should engage with non-members, explain to them why they're taking action and ask them to join the union and join them on the day. Indeed why stop with colleagues. Why not involve students as well. This strike is not just about pensions but the future health of Higher and Further Education. You'll be pushing at an open door as far as students are concerned. And in keeping with the spirit of extending liberal democratic values into the workplace wouldn't it be nice if all staff including senior managers, regardless of whether they are members of the UCU or not (or whether they voted or not) respected the will of the majority who voted and decided not to cross picket lines. I mean you might not vote in a general election but it doesn't mean you can reject the decisions and laws passed by Parliament does it? That would be vaguely anti-democratic wouldn't it?

Picket line fables and folklore galore

Picket lines are a great place to build solidarity, meet new colleagues, swap stories and absorb some of the picket line folklore that permeate universities across the country during periods of heightened militancy. You might even hear the hoary old urban myth of the conscientious manager, possibly a poor old Dean or Head of School, desperate to demonstrate their commitment to collective action and the plight of their colleagues by resigning from their union in order to cross a picket line. It's certainly done the rounds.

Time to join the union

Indeed, for those who have not yet joined the UCU (and other campus unions) what better time, under the shadow of a finely honed axe poised menacingly over several hundred jobs. What is clear is that if it falls, its keen edge will not discriminate between members and non-members of trade unions. And on this note, today in a wonderful show of solidarity, students at Edinburgh University went into occupation in support of striking Scottish teaching staff. There is a growing awareness among both students and university workers that the protests against fees and the strikes against the attacks on pensions, conditions and job losses are one and the same.

Edinburgh student occupy in solidarity with striking lecturers last week

A Vagrant's life can be a lonely life

We Vagrants by our very nature are often isolated from wider society... in Beckerian terms we're 'outsiders'. When the opportunity arises to indulge in a little collective endeavour, we grasp it eagerly with our grimy hands. The mass movements that exploded onto the world stage driven by the Egyptian and Tunisian masses in first two months of 2011 have demonstrated that collective struggle is firmly back on the agenda.  This week's strikes are therefore part of the larger global opposition to driving down our standards of living  in the now and the future (lower pension benefits) and driving up the profits of the already super-rich. We have a world to win or a lot to lose. Next to this, the thinly veiled threats of pecuniary loss should be seen for what they are - a clear indication that when push comes to shove, those at the top table are not really our friends and that they're more than a little rattled at the prospect of what our own collective endeavour might bring.

For those who do brave the elements, a picket line is an exciting place.  This Vagrant will be joining those out on the picket lines at Salford on Thursday. As strikes rarely garner much positive commentary on the television news or in the press, we have provided a little demonstration of wider action and solidarity among colleagues across the country happening this week.

Oh and by the way, don't forget to book your seat for what promises to be a huge demonstration against the Tory cuts in London this Saturday.

The full list of Universities that are out 17-22 March is below

The University of Aberdeen
Aberystwyth University
University of Bangor
University of Bath
Queen's University of Belfast
University of London, Birkbeck College
The University of Birmingham
University of Bradford
University of Bristol
Brunel University
University of Cambridge
Cardiff University
City University
Courtauld Institute of Art
Cranfield University
The University of Dundee
Durham University
University of East Anglia
University of Edinburgh
University of Essex
University of Exeter
The University of Glasgow
University of London, Goldsmiths
Heriot-Watt University
The University of Hull
Imperial College London
University of London, Institute of Education
The University of Kent
King's College London
University of Wales Lampeter
University of Lancaster
The University of Leeds
University of Leicester
University of Liverpool
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
London School of Economics
Loughborough University
LSTM
The University of Manchester
Newcastle University
The University of Nottingham
Open University
University of Oxford
University of London, Queen Mary
University of Reading
Royal College of Art
University of London, Royal Holloway
The University of Salford
University of London, School of Pharmacy
University of London, Senate House
The University of Sheffield
University of London, SOAS
University of Southampton
University of St Andrews
The University of Stirling
University of Strathclyde
University of Surrey
University of Sussex
Swansea University
University of Ulster
University College London
University of Warwick
University of York

Universities still finalising details of their action because of holiday dates:

Durham University
Newcastle University
Institute of Education
University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
University of Sussex
University of Warwick

A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution...

Ancient Egypt's post-industrial paradigm meant
this Pharaoh had to build the pyramids by himself

Recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are an enduring reminder that revolution continues to play a central role in a globalised world despite the many epitaphs and obituaries afforded to it by academics, political pundits and the literary mouthpieces for global US domination.

The spectacle of Western political elites such as David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, lining up to publicly affirm their commitment to liberal democracy and their obvious sincerity in their wish to see democracy take root in Tunisia and Egypt is only marginally preposterous when we consider the public and political support that these Western 'democracies' have consistently provided to the very same leaders and regimes. While Mubarak and Ben Ali murdered, imprisoned, tortured their own civilian populations, the US and UK governments punished them with trade deals and rather large sums  in US aid ($1.3 billion a year according to The Guardian).(1) Despite the attempts of previous British and US administrations to bring down Mubarak by the use of extreme friendship, it took the active engagement of a non-friendship strategy and the democratic mobilisation of hundreds of thousands if not millions to end his rule.

The cacophony of the democratic 'transitionals'

Although somewhat a sceptic when it comes to believing anything reported in the mainstream media, this writer thought it a little odd that some journalists should feel a little in the way of surprised that a little hostility had been shown to them by the crowds. To anyone with half filled cranium, one might have viewed this as perfectly understandable given the above support of the British and US for the soon-to-be-vanquished dictator and his bloodthirsty state machine. That the press have to a considerable degree indulged in the same sort of cack-fence-hand-balancing act that has characterised Cameron's recent vacillatory bleatings has not been lost on the ordinary Egyptian activist.

At the root of this is the West's concern that the usurption of their man in Egypt may not sufficiently dissipate the anger and opposition of the mass of Egyptians, and may act as a brake on the formulation of any government sympathetic to Western aims in the region. One other paragon of democratic delight in the region is also mightily concerned as should be the case. The expansionist state of Israel, which represents such a healthy example of what a vibrant democracy and economy should look like, that it stolidly refuses to accept the $3 billion or so in aid dished out to it by the US government every year is taking recent events very seriously indeed.(2) The Egyptian regime has been a vital ally of Israel. Without the pro-Israeli Anwar Sadat and his successor Mubarak, it is unlikely that Israel would have been able to consolidate its positions in the Occupied Territories, wage a bloody war or two against another democracy in the region - Lebanon - and commit gross human rights atrocities daily against the Palestinian peoples to say nothing of its war crimes against the population of Gaza. Thus politicians of all colours and the Western media are pushing the idea of 'transition' which for them means business as usual, and for the Egyptians, after a few democratic frills and thrills have been added to their creaking constitution, back to the business of squeezing every last drop of profit from Egyptian workers which brings us nicely to the point of this article.

Apparently, due to a shift from industrial to knowledge
production and services, this lot don't exist anymore
(striking textile workers Malhalla el-Kubra 2009)

What's that you say... the working class... not in my post-industrial paradigm!

There is however a more fundamental problem for Western political and business leaders which has loomed like veritable spectre that may yet return to haunt Europe. They are currently busy ramming home neoliberal policies and massive cuts in social provision across Europe (Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the UK) in order to stave off economic collapse and further enrich the already rich at our expense. Mubarak's been in the vanguard of a similar set of policies which he's been happily visiting on his own people for decades, like some latter day global reincarnation of the Exodian plagues. Thus, the speed with which events in Tunisia and Algeria hopped across North Africa showing utter disdain for national borders and engulfed Egypt, has sent a shiver down the collective spines (if one might be found) among the Western ruling classes. It would appear that Trotsky's theories on permanent revolution have never been so apposite.

Post-industrialism -  a theory of the middle class by the middle class, for the middle class

There has been a corollary in the forcing of the Washington Consensus policies down the publics' collective throats for decades. They have also been ideologically bludgeoned into accepting the common sense notion that the working class as a force for revolutionary change in the world, belongs to a long-buried past. It's a past lazily epitomised by many now-cynical once left-ish academics and vox-pop political commentators as the failed 'actually existing socialism' and 'communist' experiment of the former USSR and its satellite states of Eastern Europe. For much of the press and media, because of the almost hegemonic status of this view, this most recent (and ongoing) revolution must therefore be characterised as 'middle class' because to them, the 'other lot' only inhabit the footnotes in dusty tomes in the British Library or have slipped down the social scale and now inhabit a Sub-Dickensian cider-sodden underworld  three clicks away from Cannery Row referred to increasingly by the same media types and social analysts as 'the underclass'. Besides, if we believed the press, the entire revolution was achieved by a single FaceBook savvy post-graduate with a laptop and over-ambitious sebaceous glands.

This is not to willfully avoid the obvious fact that much mass middle class discontent (unemployment and the end of 'jobs for life' in the civil service for middle class university graduates) has played an important role within the revolution. Rare are the revolutions that consist of a single class actor. But how often have we been told by the likes of Ronald Inglehart and his merry band of post-materialists that it's by and large the working class whose demands tend to centre on the material while the middle classes protest about the environment, nuclear disarmament and chlorine-free tampons?

The roots of the revolution

Yet the recent social mass explosion that has led to Mubarak's political demise, should not be seen in isolation nor as the consequence of the ire of an increasingly disenfranchised and powerless middle class. It should viewed as an extension of mass working class opposition to both the regime and the neoliberal policies of the West eagerly pursued by Mubarak resulting in increasing numbers of strikes that have raged in the industrial centres of Egypt for many years. "What rot! Why haven't we heard about these strikes?" I hear you chime. It's quite elementary my dear Watsons.  It's a sort of self-fulfilling logic (based on simple cause and effect) which goes something like this: because the working class no longer exist or at best, are few in number, why report the activities of a small minority. People have money in their pockets, may own their own homes (ex-council) have computers, mobile phones and go on holiday at least once a year. It's a very good indicator to social mobility. We're all middle class! (or at least lower-middle class). Thus reporting working class strikes isn't particularly relevant or popular (and might give people the wrong idea) and as such, they're about as welcome on the BBC teatime news or Newsnight as a poorly timed methaneous emission at a canary testing factory. Rare unless it happens to be on British Airways and has a detrimental impact on the holiday plans of social class grade B and C1.

British Airways cabin crews prior
to being post-industrialised out of history

Malhalla el-Where?

So it's no surprise that the wave of strikes that have defined Egypt for the past three to four years, particularly around the huge textile mills of Mahalla el-Kubra,(3) have made hardly a dent in the scheduling of BBC news or the wider press. Why would reporters wish to cover this? Strikes are only ever about material things after all - 'knife and fork' issues. They're never political are they? It's a general rule of thumb among many used to determine what's newsworthy and what's not concerning all things industrial. And it is of course entirely wrong. And exactly who are these people who the 'determining'... the people who have not only accepted the 'post-industrial' paradigm but have acted as the vanguard in convincing us that the working class really have 'ceased to be' in cod Cleesian terminology? They accept the ideology and feel the need to convince us the same should we feel the need to organise and resist the magnetic attraction of this perfectly natural phenomenon known as 'the market'. As most are drawn from the middle class, educated at the elite universities such as Cambridge and Oxford, they rarely go on strike. It's hardly surprising that they should hold such views. Besides, they don't want their weekend breaks ruined in a bout of wildcat action by baggage handlers at Stanstead.

The new middle class

But the evidence shows that that the Egyptian working class have consistently been at the forefront of the fightback against the state, rising prices, unemployment and for key political demands for many years. Alexander has written extensively on the importance of working class resistance to the market reforms of the Mubarak regime and provides in her analysis a level of continuity between events over the last few years and those of today.(4) Their actions have provided the space for such recent political demands to be formulated. They have consistently confronted Mubarak's state repressive apparatus head-on and have given wider Egyptian society (with the Tunisian masses) the confidence to take on the state machinery. In contrast, the FaceBook analyses provided by the Oxbridge elites and political journos and commentators have proved largely ahistorical and frankly wanting.

An example to test this ridiculous assumption

Last weekend (5-6th Feb), the British news media appeared to have placed the Egyptian revolution lower down its list of priorities for reportage. Indeed, after the violence of the counter-revolution in the guise of the plain clothes police thugs and pro-Mubarak supporters on camel-back charging through the throng, if one was to believe much of the news coverage, it was all pretty much over and the most that the protesters could expect was many more months of Mubarak in power until a orderly 'transition' to civilian rule could be organised. Yet within one or two days, with the spreading of strikes across Egypt and the active participation of the working classes in the vanguard of the protest movement (it was noted on the BBC news around the same time how many middle class activists had been driven from Tahrir Square by the violence of the pro-Mubarak forces who had taken the streets, to be replaced by even greater numbers of workers)(5)

Enter the dragon

By Tuesday and Wednesday it had all changed. BBC news reporters and the press had switched from endless pictures of mass humanity in Tahrir Square to pictures of striking workers on the Suez Canal,(6) to reporting strikes by doctors, lawyers (the respectable end of the strike movement) striking rail and public transport workers.(7) In Cairo, hundreds of 'electricity workers stood in front of the South Cairo Electricity Company, demanding the ousting of its director.'(8) Few could deny the political relevance of this act against a government appointed bureaucrat of a state-owned company. Railway workers wishing to strike across the country were asked to remain at work to enable protesters to travel by rail to the major protests being organised, a striking example if any of the potential power of sections of the working class in 'post-industrial' society.(9) With the growing participation of increasing numbers of striking workers in key industries, the movement was emboldened, given a fresh impetus and wielded real power.(10)

The same old tears...

The example of events in Tunisia and Egypt are there for us to draw from and learn. This will not be lost on our own ruling political elites (and the elites who exert dominance over every minute of our lives but are never elected - the capitalist ruling class and the unaccountable managerial elites who exercise power on their behalf) who behind the cloak of 'democratic legitimacy', savage our welfare, health and education systems, throw hundred of thousands on the scrapheap and impose more WTO and World Bank prescriptive measures upon us in the form of sell-offs and forced privatisations. Expect a tightening up of the British legal system as our own homegrown security police apparatus adopt the 'Mubarak methodology' as tens and hundreds of thousands take to the streets to oppose to these vicious and damaging policies.

TUC Demonstration Against Cuts, Saturday 26th March 2011, assemble 11am Victoria Embankment, London, march to rally in Hyde Park,

As such, it is beholden upon us to join our Egyptian brothers and sisters and exhort our trade union branches to provide coaches for the Demonstration Against Cuts.

(1) Source The Guardian, Friday 4th Feb 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/egypt-protests-us-military-aid
(2) Counterpunch sourced at http://www.counterpunch.org/christison03052009.html
(3) Sourced at http://www.arabawy.org/2009/07/15/egypt-workers-fight-for-pay-and-against-the-state/
(4) Alexander A, Inside Egypt's Mass Strikes, International Socialism Journal, 03 March 2008 sourced at http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=428
(5) Source The Economist at http://www.economist.com/node/18063746
(6) Sourced at http://wallstreetpit.com/61006-suez-canal-workers-go-on-strike
(7) Sourced at http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/02/09/Rail-workers-strike-in-Egypt/UPI-23911297278607/
(8) The Globe and Mail, Feb 09 2011, sourced at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-in-egypt/workers-strike-as-egyptian-uprising-moves-to-second-stage/article1901299/
(9)Sourced at http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=207693&R=R3
(10) Tehran Times 11 Feb 2011, sourced at http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/02/09/Rail-workers-strike-in-Egypt/UPI-23911297278607/

For Fox Sake

On Sunday 4th of July, Channel Four aired a documentary film entitled 'Urban Fox Attack'. The web-synopsis read:

"In May 2010, on a balmy summer night, east Londoners Pauline and Nick Koupparis heard a noise from their twin baby girls' room. They were horrified to find a fox in the cot and the two girls covered in blood. The fox fled and the parents rushed their babies to hospital, where one remained for 12 days. Film maker Riete Oord has been filming foxes for three years in Hackney, the borough where the attack took place. In this film, she examines the issue that is dividing the suburbs: whether the urban vulpes vulpes is a welcome reminder of the countryside and an asset to every back garden or a dangerous menace."

This documentary arrives on the back of a series of sensationalist tabloid headlines such as 'Fox attack on my girls was like a horror film', and 'Maimed' and a BBC documentary aired on 1st July imaginatively titled 'The Fox Attack Twins'. This was produced by a company called Leopard Films. Coincidentally the father of the twins, Nick Koupparis is the Head of Finance for Leopard Films. Clearly the attack on these two children was awful and the writer of this blog naturally wishes them a quick and full recovery. However, since the attack a swathe of sensationalist headlines have adorned the front pages of the scandal sheets. The ubiquitous urban fox has it seems almost come to replace Osama bin Laden in the press and media as public enemy #1.

So good they named him twice

Other attacks are now making the headlines with a child in Brighton reported in The Argus to have suffered an 'attack' at the hands of the vicious now-garden dweller. Indeed it's seemingly such a threat to Western civilisation that it's been named twice - vulpes vulpes - emphasising the uniquely terroristic qualities of this surreptitious night-stalking sampler of sprogs. The sense of heightened fear around the Koupparis incident was further enhanced in the local community when police made the decision to provide the family with round the clock police protection over a few days for fear of a repeat attack by a determined bushy-tailed 'divine winder'.1 The police stressed that talk of a series of threatening phone calls to the family with a distinctive 'hedgerowy accent' were silly rumours and not the reason for the protection. The police confirmed that the reason for the protection was fear of reprisals from animal rights activists who according to a report in the left-wing London Evening Standard, have made "online threats". With their usual steely logic and clarity of thought, Scotland Yard have said that they "are aware there is a potential threat" although they further noted that "there were no specific threats".

A brief and potted history of the press-induced 'moral panic' - the Irish menace

The press have a long and distinguished history in raising the spectre of the fear of an internal enemy. From the 'gin panics' of the early 18th century to the anti-Irish onslaughts where the Irish were regularly portrayed as ape-like terrorists in sickeningly racist Victorian caricatures. This was during the growth of Fenian resistance in the shape of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, to continued British rule and oppression in Ireland. In many respects, and mirroring the fact that Ireland was Britain's oldest colonial acquisition (remains), the anti-Irish hysteria continued thorughout the 20th century. It reached something of an apogee in the 'Irish joke' and the terrible miscarriage of justice in the wrongful imprisonments of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four during the 1970s (again shadowing the heightened campaign by Irish nationalists in this period to remove British political and military interference from Northern Ireland).2

Making anti-semitism respectable

The gutter-press were also at the forefront of a campaign against Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe escaping a wave of anti-semitic pogroms at the turn of the century, which directly laid the foundations for the 1905 Aliens Act. In the decades following this campaign, anti-semitism became the preferred form of racism for right-wing political opportunists and many middle class bigots who coat-tailed them. This was adopted by Oswald Mosley and his fascist Blackshirts in the 1930s who like their German Nazi counterparts blamed Jews both for disseminating virulent anti-capitalist communism throughout Europe and Britain, and for using their domination of the banks to bring about the Wall Street Crash and subsequent global economic slump. The same processes are at work today with the Nazi BNP and their fellow travellers the fascist EDL. It is they who have picked up the baton of virulent anti-Muslim racism - Islamophobia - from the press, politicians and the media in portraying Islam (and by association all Muslims) as responsible for the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. Once again, imperialism has played a dominant role in promoting racism and division to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lock up your doors and your daughters

In the 1970s, the word 'mugging' was invented by the press and used specifically to colour public opinion against young black men, who were portrayed as a predatory threat to civilised society, or worse, were heavily sexualised and ready to pounce on unsuspecting young (white) women. This coincided with the global downturn of 1973 and the wholesale jettisoning of thirty years of Keynesian economic policy in the form of state intervention for a return to the once discredited economic orthodoxy of the Chicago School and the doctrine of laissez faire. As politicians took the axe to public spending and jobs, the press and media actively promoted the idea that the free market could provide services, jobs and our social needs far more efficiently than could the cumbersome state. In reality, the market let rip throughout society and the economy resulted in mass unemployment, the destruction of capital on a scale not seen since the Great Depression and massive social upheaval. That this impacted on the poorest sections of society, more usually ethnic minority groups, was reflected in the increased levels of confrontational and racist policing of black communities. Young males of West Indian descent became the the targets of the police and the racist 'sus laws'.3 Riots were the almost inevitable outcome of the massively increased levels of racist policing. The portrayal of young black men in this way was designed to provide the public with an alternative target for their anger instead of blaming the politicians for the devastation.

HIV-AIDS - it's a gay thing apparently

One specific moral panic is however never satisfactory in engendering a wider climate of fear and increased social atomisation. In the mid 1980s the threat to society (and the Victorian family values the Tory government were promoting) came in the form of another press and media driven moral panic. This time another oppressed minority group became scapegoats as a new and fatal disease took its toll on men from the gay community. The press and media surpassed themselves in sensationalising the threat that HIV/AIDS posed to the public. Led by the Murdoch press, The Sun, always game for providing the tabloid reading public with 'witty' sensationalist headlines dreamed up the term 'Gay Plague' which rapidly became absorbed into the public lexicon. Gay men, because of their 'deviant' sexual behaviour were seen as wholly responsible for inflicting this almost medieval contagion on humanity, because they rejected the Victorian morality and family values. The almost millennialist fervour with which gay men were portrayed by the press not as victims but as the progenitors of this terrible disease and part of the wider cause of social breakdown in British society was in marked contrast to the their collective amnesia in denying any link between the disorder and years of neoliberal economic orthodoxy promoted by a government that wanted to spend less public money on public health, not more. This irrational fear of HIV/AIDS (and gay men) was in 1986 codified in law as the notorious piece of homophobic legislation known as Section 28. This prevented local authorities from promoting or publishing material with the intention of promoting homosexuality "as a pretended family relationship".

The 'enemy within'

The miners and Arthur Scargill came in for a particularly nasty press and media campaign with Margaret Thatcher famously evoking the ghost of Senator Joseph McCarthy 'red menace' branding them and their leadership as 'the enemy within'. Dutifully, the right-wing press, the police and the leadership of the Labour Party and trade unions, combined to provide Thatcher's assault on the Conservative Party's historic enemy with the tools that led to the miners' eventual defeat. Despite being proved correct in his analysis of what the government had in store for the mining industry in Britain, the name Arthur Scargill today is synonymous with a particular sort of violent and irrational militancy. The assault by the combined forces of the state on the miners was never about closing 'uneconomic pits' (nuclear power has been uneconomic since its inception) but about smashing the organised working class in order to lay a proper foundation for the neoliberal onslaught. It was also about retribution for the humiliating defeat of Heath's Tory government in 1974 brought down by the miners and a militant working class.

Mum's the single word

Since then, single mothers, young kids with no jobs and nothing to do but get pissed or stoned in order to while away the almost complete alienation instilled in them by the 'must have' capitalist system ('feral estate-dwelling youths), paedophiles, 'black on black' crime and gun-toting/knife-wielding black youths, have provided unscrupulous journalists and news proprietors with the social tinder necessary to instil widespread fear into an increasingly atomised society. With the 'new politics' of Camoclegg, it's now the (re)turn of the undeserving poor - in this case anyone unfortunate enough to be claiming long-term Incapacity Benefits - who are portrayed as scrounging idlers stealing from those that need it and an increasingly strained or nigh-on-empty public purse.

The clash of civilisations - the Hijab, the Burqa and the threat young Muslim women pose to the fabric of Western society

Finally, a more recent target for the combined ire of the press and right-wing bigotry alike, and one the promises to take centre stage at sometime in the not-too-distant future is the young Burka or Hijab wearing Muslim woman.4 Having played itself out in France, and more recently in Belgium, a ban on the wearing of the Burka or Hijab in the public arena will find support in the most unlikely of places. Prepare to see an unholy alliance of middle class liberals incensed at the inate and fundamentally oppressive nature of these medieval religious symbols and Daily Mail/Sun readers whose primary motivations will be racism dressed up in the garb of enlightenment rationality.5

The 'Red Menace' out-foxed?

But what about our erstwhile friend (or enemy) Renert? While the urbanised fox continues to target the be-feathered ecologically friendly egg-layers of Hackney's Good Life living 'Tom and Barbaras' (or indeed the odd bite of a wayward podgy hand), he'll continue to make the headlines.

Yet there is a more serious sub-text to this latest 'moral panic' and it's about class. The more sceptical among you might concur with this author and the historical record in suggesting that there might be vested interests in raising the current fox-terror-threat to critical. If foxes can be culled in our inner-cities because they're deemed 'a pest' (the subtext being that they really do constitute the most serious threat to the stability of capitalism,seriously undermining the ability of the middle classes to reproduce the next generation of managers through eating their children alive while they sleep), then why can't they be culled in the countryside. They are after all pest there as well. They consume large quantities our poor farmers' poultry which is damaging to our National Agricultural interest. And of course, there are thousands of toffs with thousands of currently unemployed horses and dogs literally chomping at the bit to get their teeth into this quintessentially self-effacing nocturne.

With the election of the Tory coalition government whose leader supports repeal of the 2005 Hunting Act, it is simply a matter of time before the Countryside Alliance backed by their wealth and a long list of public-spirited landowning pest controllers have their day. Maybe even TV chef Heston Blumenthal can make use of what's left of their torn bodies and knock up an extravagant fox-based menu for a few of his very worthy celebrity friends.

Anyone for rabies?

Gary Paul Duke

1'Divine Wind' is a common translation for the word 'kamikaze'.
2 For an interesting account of the history of anti-Irish racism see Curtis L, Nothing but the Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism, Information on Ireland, London 1991
3 See Farrell A, Crime, Class and Corruption, Bookmarks, London, 1995
4 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: 'They are right to ban the burka, even if it is for the wrong reasons' in The Independent Online, Friday, 8 January 2010
5 For an interesting analysis of the debate on the banning of the hijab see 'The Hijab, Racism and the State', Boulange A, in International Socialism Journal, Issue 102, November 2004

The Right-eousness of the 'Watchers'

This morning (2nd July 2010) I awoke to reports on the BBC news reporting on the high levels of remuneration for trade union bosses. Now in these times of public service cutbacks, attacks on public sector pensions, and the possibility of hundreds of thousands of former public sector workers filling a potential New, New Labour anti-Tory election billboard at the next General Election, my first thought was "yes indeed, you are paid far too much. Why don't you set an example and take the average wage?" Almost as a whispered aside, the report mentioned that an organisation labelled the Taxpayers Alliance was responsible for compiling the list and exposing the salaries of these professional bureaucrats. I thought a little digging into the background of this fiscally pious campaign group might be rewarding.

Who are the Taxpayers Alliance?

What was interesting about their website was its claim that the Alliance would "hold any government to account and represent taxpayers interests..." laudable sentiments indeed. Statements such as "...over the last decade, British taxpayers have been saddled with hikes in taxes on everything from driving to work to buying a new home..." would clearly have an appeal to many ordinary low-paid workers and those (un)fortunate enough to be home-owners. Yet the apparent concern with representing the interests of ordinary people stood at odds with the suggestion that "Public sector staff are now paid more (good), get better pensions (good) and work fewer hours (good) than people in the private sector. Public spending is simply far too high (hmmm) and there need to be cuts (bad)." For the TPA, the 'fiscal crisis' and 'huge structural deficit' is a result of huge levels of public spending, and high levels of public sector pay, not a result of pouring hundreds of billions of taxpayers pounds into the coffers of the banks. Now the alarm bells were peeling like VE Day had just been officially reannounced. A little bit of investigation was called for.

An independent grassroots campaign?

I've been involved with a few independent grassroots campaigns in the past, many of them numbering tens of thousands of members. I was keen to determine how independent this 'campaign' group was. According to their website, the Taxpayers Alliance:

"Under the leadership of Matthew Elliott, ...has grown from operating as a small group of volunteers meeting in various coffee shops around London, to being “arguably the most influential pressure group in the country” according to The Guardian. With 35,000 supporters and fifteen members of staff working from offices in London and Birmingham, it attracts an average of 700 high quality media hits every month and is a significant force in local government, Westminster and Brussels."

Given the levels of influence this organisation claimed it had, I wondered whom exactly the leading lights of the TPA might be. A quick search on Google and I perchanced upon an article by Patrick Barkham in The Guardian who writes:

"The three founders [are], Andrew Allum, a former Conservative councillor, Florence Heath, a geologist and former Young Conservative, and Matthew Elliott, co-founder and former Tory researcher..." (The Guardian, 17 March 2008)

It was quite apparent that co-founder Matthew Elliot wasn't as 'independent' as he claimed:

"In no way are we a Tory Party front group. We attack both parties. We don't actually think any political party in the UK is now representing those people who actually want to see lower taxes and less government spending."

If it looks like a Tory, talks like a Tory, it is a Tory

Elliot is currently a member of the advisory board of the Young Britons Foundation a right-wing organisation described by the former leader of Conservative Future Donal Blaney as "a Conservative madrasa". What is also clear is that the membership and supporters of the YBF read 

like a cast of characters from previous and current Tory administrations. More sinisterly, the YBF also declared its intent to lay bare "left-wing bias" in British universities. Blaney trumpets the overseas trips to the Blue Ridge Arsenal, Virginia in 2008 where YBF and young Conservatives were given firearms training. This begs the question why British security services haven't interviewed Mr Blaney and his gun-toting fledgling Tories. Young British Muslims have been detained at her majesty's pleasure for less. The YBF also has substantial links with US neo-conservative groups and other right-wing organisations.

The Manifesto of the Taxpayers Alliance also closely resembles much of the policy promoted by the Tories, that I wondered if members of the TPA had been intimately involved in shaping Conservative Party policy?

The subjugation of investigative reporting by the right

There is no denying that this group have become influential in opinion forming within the press and media. If you like me have wondered why these media organisations seem to be singing from the same hymn-sheet, the TPA have quite deftly taken advantage of the large-scale 'rationalisations' imposed by major newspaper publishers over the last few years in order to try and reverse the decline in their overall profitability. With less journalists employed in the industry, those remaining are forced to increase their productivity. Consequently there is little time for in-depth investigative journalism. The TPA thus prides itself on its ability to provide over-worked and deadline watching journalists with ready-made bite-size press releases with attendant eye-catching headlines. Elliot comments that:

"The impression I get is that what the media like now is to have spokesmen representing groups in society and we have filled a niche in terms of speaking on behalf of tax payers in a credible and professional way."(B Wheeler, BBC News online)

Few of the organisations I've been involved in can claim to represent around 50% of the British population (30 million taxpayers). Even fewer can boast such significant levels of direct influence over the media and political parties, especially those currently in power. That such prominent press and news organisations allow themselves to be used in such a manner by the Conservative Party's proxies is quite shameful.

What's their beef with the trade union leaders?

The question of exactly why the trade unions have come under the scrutiny of the Taxpayers Alliance centres on monies paid to trade unions from the Union Modernisation Fund, funded from government grants from the coffers of the taxman. However, what the TPA have not made public is an arm of their organisation called the Politics and Economics Research Trust. According to a report in Slashnews, the trust came in for criticism recently as it was claimed it could benefit from tax subsidies of up to 40% from the donations of individuals:

"A leading tax accountant said it was extraordinary that the alliance appeared to be benefitting from charitable tax relief."Donors are typically saving tax on their contributions and so the government is chipping in between 20% and 40% to help the Taxpayers' Alliance with its work," said Mike Warburton, a tax specialist at Grant Thornton. "Your readers may be surprised that an organisation which argues for lower taxes and lower public spending is asking the government to do that for its research arm", said Mike Warburton, a tax specialist at Grant Thornton.(Slashnews.co.uk, Dec 21 2009)

There is certainly an element of hypocrisy at play here. What a pity the papers and media chose to ignore this. However, given the increasing numbers of important strikes in the UK such as the recent London Tube workers strike and those of British Airways cabin crews, one cannot help but think that the old game of 'divide and rule' is at work. This should be seen for what it is, part of the wider softening-up process by the Con-Dem coalition government in order to prepare us for a raft of savage and deep cuts across the public sector? One also wonders why the Taxpayers Alliance make no mention of ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ending our (taxpayer-funded) reliance on nuclear energy or the scrapping of the proposed new generation Trident missile program, all extremely draining to the public purse.

Try the alternative

What is clear is that the Taxpayers Alliance is little more than an alliance of conservatives (with and without the big C), right-wing think-tanks and a motley crew of incredibly wealthy industrialists such as the secretive Midlands Industrial Council, a powerful an extremely wealthy organisation which donates huge sums of money to the Conservative Party. With backing such as this, it is clear that the TPA exists true to their ambitions in lowering the burden of taxation for the wealthy, and in order to do this they are happy to provide the media with the axes they need to help dismantle the public sector, promote privatisation and make Britain a better place for capitalism to do business in. All this of course at our expense.

A real Taxpayers Alliance

However, holding governments to account for where they spend our taxes is important. Clearly an organisation comprised of supporters of this current government is never going to hold them to account. Yet there are real campaigning groups who are serious about reducing the huge salaries and bonuses paid in the private sector to CEOs and others. Therefore I would encourage anyone who's interested to visit these alternative websites if they wish to involve themselves in a real taxpayers alliance called The Other Taxpayers Alliance. Alternatively try the Tax Justice Network.

A rum cove

One final example of the blatant hypocrisy of the leading lights of the TPA, Alexander Heath, a director of the organisation, has found a novel way of lowering his tax bill to zero. He resides in France.