Mad About the Buoy...

I went for my regular Sunday morning swim today. We have a lovely new leisure centre, which is well-used and inviting, with two pools (something of a luxury in this day and age). Today, owing to some staffing issues, the swimming lessons which usually take place in the second pool had been moved into the main one, with half of it roped off for general use. This made lane swimming a bit tricky for the Desperate Old Codgers like myself - I can keep up a slow and steady pace, but am easily sunk by an over-eager youngster suddenly lurching in front of me or splashing me unexpectedly. Still, no-one begrudges children their swimming lessons - it's a vital skill which will become ever more important as ocean levels rise....

As I was plodding along like an out of condition dugong I started to reminisce about my own swimming lessons. As I recall, my primary school took us every week, on foot, to the local municipal pool. Initially, this was the old Maidstone Baths, apparently the first municipal baths in the country (we also had the first municipal theatre, which as the theatre manager once said was ironic, as "the town has never been known for either its cleanliness or its culture"). 

I can't remember how young we were when lessons started, but it was certainly pre-decimalisation, because I recall taking a threepenny bit with me every week. Later, we moved to the brand new pool built in the early 1970s, which had a main pool, learners' pool and diving pool. A council-built and -run facility. A Tory council, no less. These lessons continued every week up to the end of what is now Year 6. 

Every week. For six years.

Now, our kids get one year's school swimming, to which they're bussed (a sizeable chunk out of the school budget). So if you're not fortunate enough to become a strong swimmer in the course of the year you probably won't get any better.

The only alternative is for your parents to fork out for lessons from the company that runs the leisure centre for the council - "from £16.50 a month" isn't easily found when money's tight, so inevitably, the poorest and "just about managing" will lose out again.

To be fair, Manchester City Council offers free swimming to the under 16s during school holidays but it's still no substitute for regular supervised tuition over a number of years to produce strong, safe swimmers.

Increasingly I'm feeling that if I wasn't fortunate enough to be part of the baby boomer generation at least I benefited from a childhood where the welfare state and civic provision was embedded in our post-war culture and made us a progressive nation. All that has now been stripped away by the cult of individualism that has marked the last 35 years. I grew up in an era when even Tory governments saw the merit in public provision. Successive governments since 1979 have outsourced everything of value to us as communities and then we wonder why communities have given up on politics.

I wonder what on earth we could do to start rectifying that....on June 8th?

#N30

Huge love and support for all my friends and former colleagues on strike today. Yesterday's Autumn Statement proved that the coalition won't be happy until it's returned us all to the Victorian era, where support for the poor and needy is dependent on the partisan sympathy of the elite (welcome back, the "undeserving poor") and where working people have no security or protection. 

I supported those in the private sector whose pensions were raided, whose schemes were shut down or made much worse; just because I wasn't immediately affected didn't mean that I sat there thinking, "I'm alright, Jack, I've got my nice public sector pension waiting for me." (which is the corrollory of some of the "Well, I haven't got a decent pension, so why should you have one?" comments I've been hearing recently).

In case no-one noticed, the public sector unions were prevented from taking action in support of you because of the "reforms" of the last Tory government. Sorry.

Today's action may be primarily about pensions, but it's about so much more. Snuck out yesterday was the abandonment of the TUPE regulations which (allegedly) offer protection to terms and conditions of public sector workers whose jobs are transferred to a private provider. Those of my former colleagues involved in the Learner Support debacle will know that the TUPE regulations aren't worth much, but they are a small buffer against exploitation. 

On transfer from the council, we were denied permission to retain our local government pensions, which now sit there as deferred benefits until we're 65 - sorry, 66 - no, sorry 67......... We can do nothing to help ourselves on this one - we can't even agree to the government's terms and contribute more for longer and get less - we just have to sit tight and hope that too many current members don't pull out of the scheme and make it unsustainable. 

Within a year of transferring out, I found myself demoted as part of a "restructure", the catch-all way for TUPE to be undermined. Within two years of transfer, I'd been paid off to make room for some more call centre staff (mostly unemployed graduates, with loans to pay off) on minimum wage. I relied on UNISON to make sure I didn't get ripped off as part of this process (as I had a few years earlier, when the council had ignored the fact that workplace bullying had driven me off sick and tried to instigate capability procedings against me (the bully, you might wish to note, was eventually sacked for inappropriate behaviour in a completely unrelated set of circumstances). 

For these reasons, if no others, I am fully behind today's action. The union protected me when I was vulnerable, so I have a duty to support those who are still vulnerable.

If the private sector (and by this, I mean ordinary workers in the private sector, not the so-called "wealth creators) has lost out in pay/pensions, etc over the last 30 years, it's because it has become de-unionised. Like the young women who describe themselves as "post-feminist" and then decry the fact that they are still discriminated against, many people towards the end of the 20th century convinced themselves that unions were an anachronism; that we had won all the battles. In the good times, this was a persuasive argument, although in hindsight it was clearly wrong.

My great-grandfather, a master baker, was sacked for suggesting that he and his fellow workers should be paid for the extra shifts they were asked to put in to provide the Navy with bread for the fleet putting in at Dover. My  (Tory) father worked all his life in the private sector, but was a member - and steward - of his staff association (GMB-linked, if I remember rightly). He knew that if you didn't have representation, you were vulnerable.

It is perfectly clear now, that the battles are far from won. The coalition is intent on wrecking civil society, and returning us to the conditions that made Dickens so "righteously indignant" (the same righteous indignation that Michael Gove, without a hint of irony, so admires!). Instead of support from the state, all but the independently wealthy will have to rely on the goodwill of charities (Job Centres are already referring people to food banks) and corporations.

Instead of being run by elected, accountable local authorities, schools will be privatised (and make no mistake, that's what academy status is) and run by unaccountable private 'sponsors', many of which seem to have a (sometimes dubious) religious background. that's bad news for those of us who do not want our children indoctrinated and who welcomed the transfer of state education provision from church to state.

The NHS, widely found by independent studies to be one of the most cost-effective health systems in the world, is being sold off to Lansley's business associates, at anenormous cost in "restructuring"

For those who think public sectors are overpaid/lazy/do non-jobs, etc, or that it costs 'too much' to run local councils, just watch how much more it costs once council services are handed to the outsourcing corporations. And this doesn't go on wages for the staff, it goes to senior managers and shareholders. Capita is making healthy profits in the midst of the worst austerity in (almost) living memory, on the back of its multiple government contracts. And this at a time when hundreds of small (private) businesses are struggling to keep afloat (especially if they relied on council contracts for their business!).

The difference between the laissez faire economies of the industrial revolution and today, though, is that those who made enormous fortunes out of their workforce at least had some level of guilt about it and used philanthropy to redress the balance a little. Today, the multimillionaires see no reason why they should give anything back. Hell, they don't even pay the tax they're supposed to contribute! Laissez-faire, too, meant that governments, largely, did not intervene - this government is actively promoting the looting of the public sector.

So today, I am not merely supporting my colleagues in the public sector, but hoping that this action, supported by 60-70% of the public (when was the last time a public sector strike had that level of support?), will show that the people of this country are not the apathetic, unthinking consumerist drones the coalition believe and hope them to be. It is not public vs private, it is the super-rich vs the rest of us. This is looking increasingly like Class War - the rich really hate us, don't they?