Spent Saturday marching for peace in Gaza – neither Hamas nor Zionism but international socialism – and spent a mere 9 hours on Monday stuck in an airless cell (ok, it was ACAS but it felt like that..) negotiating – and I use the term in its loosest sense – with Reed Business Information management.
ACAS was all pretty fruitless. Whilst local union reps had spent hours consulting with members and coming up with a number of innovative proposals to break a long-running deadlock management didn’t even all manage to turn up, let along with any ideas. They spent half their time on the phone getting instructions. The instruction appears to have been – no!
So nothing achieved and we race headlong towards a ballot and possible tribunal cases. What a wasted opportunity.
Tuesday I met with Gerry Morrissey, Bectu’s General Secretary at the BBC, had a meeting with one of our BBC secondees, Keith Murray, with Deputy General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet and Campaigns head Stephen Pearse to put final plans in place for the NUJ’s Jobs Summit, and then went to Parliament to meet with the NUJ’s Parliamentary Group. We discussed the crisis facing local newspapers, the refusal of the New Statesman to recognise the union despite us representing 15 out of 16 editorial staff, an ongoing dispute at the BBC World Service, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain review, the Israeli ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza and agreed a number of letters, Parliamentary Questions, Early Day Motions on other activity over the coming weeks.
Then back home to try and catch up on phone calls and emails..sorry if I missed yours!
1 comment:
Dear Jeremy
We're organising PAX Conference (Liverpool, 4/03/09)that aims to bring together people from different disciplines to address collaboratively social divisive issues and I would like to invite you to co-chair the session on 'Media and Community' (session 5) and to present a paper on the integrity and conscious journalism in the UK.
The aim of the conference is to produce a white paper that would set a framework for collaborative and join projects by artists, intellectuals and scientists for the benefit of the communities.
Our website www.pax08.com
PAX Conference Programme
(@The Blackie Art Organisation,
Great Georges Street
Liverpool L1 5EW
Date 4/03/09 from 10 am - 6pm)
Contact Email - lotfi@pax08.com
Contact phone - 07910908758)
Plenary Session
PAX Concept and Objectives,
Session 1 - Sports and community cohesion
The sports' divisive /unifying factor.
Best practices in Sports as a community cohesion tool
Setting the pace for inter-clubs manifesto .....
Session 2 - Arts, Science and Community
Connecting Science with communities,
Students and communities - dialogue of deaf?
Collaboration for the benefit of the community
Conscious art, a community building tool
Session 3 - Media and Community
Represention of minority groups in the media
Hidden agendas, Who owns what and the press lobby in the UK
Impact of alternative press
Where has the conscious journalism gone?
Session 5- Culture and Community
Transnationalism and communitarism
Inter-religion tensions
Faith Manifesto for the City,
Cultural diversity or cultural ghettos?
Racism alive and well, history and reasons
How can the intelligentsia be a vehicule of change in an increasingly consumer culture?
Session 6 - Policy and Community
Peoples lobby vs political lobby
Consequences of the foreign policy on inter-community dialogue
How can communities make their voice heard
Session 6 - Socio-econnomics
Deprivation and ASBOS
Liverpool map of poverty, a ticking bomb
Culture of the rich- What has Liverpool 2008 brought to the local communities
Socially responsible ventures
Plenary Session
Round table and presentation of sessions recommendations
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