THE POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF CPSA
FIGHTING ON IN OUR 45th YEAR BUT A BIT RETIRED NOW
FREEDOM! UNITY! SOCIALISM!
ONE CIVIL SERVICE UNION,
ONE GLORIOUS DESTINY!
REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY!
ROUND AND ABOUT
BY JUDAS ISCARIOT - just before Easter 2005
Spring is here heralding the season of Easter eggs, bunnies and the usual parades the kids like. But down in the dug-outs we know that the thaw is heralding another big offensive – this time along the pension’s front.
The pension strike vote made interesting reading. It was a credible turn-out and the 66,949 Yes vote is about 12 per cent of the entire civil service. We can only assume that the 33,196 members who voted no were made up of members shortly to retire or accept retirement packages who don’t want to lose the day’s pay as it would also hit their pension pay-out. Pathfinder pensioners are particularly hit by the new proposals because the best of their last three years earnings when they retired did not take into account their last year – due to the three months lost through strike action – but the previous year which was at a lower pay rate. The longer you’re retired the more you lose – and no hardship committee’s is going to pick up the tab for that. It’s unfair to harangue the elderly from the picket line, but the package snatchers are a different matter…
Whether the strike goes ahead is still in the balance. The Government is moving quickly to stitch up a deal to defer any action by the public sector unions until after the general election that will almost certainly fall on 5 th May.
But back at Chateau Falconcrest our own elections are now top of the agenda. Both main lists are out and LUNITY looks set to hold their majority on the NEC.
The left list is an entirely predictable parcelling out of the spoils with the lions share left for the former MENDICANTS, of course.
The inappropriately named 4themembers bloc has got off to a bad start with a piss-poor election web-site and an ego-trip appeal for GS nominations by JAKE WILDE, their chief enforcer. Their slate was drawn up by MOIRA CAMPBELL and JAKE and consists of all their old hands plus a few mugs to bump up the list including HOWARD FULLER, the man who thinks he’s JUDGE DREDD, and RACHEL BARROWCLOUGH, the former COMMISSAR who once ran for the CPSA Presidency on the BL’84 ticket. Poor old RACHEL – always in the wrong faction at the wrong time.
The minnows like the PCS Democrats and the SECRET LEFT of “Unity” are keeping their heads down content to ride on the LUNITY list but STUART CURRIE is making one last throw, largely to fuck up JAKE and PRIESTLEY.
FAT BOY SLIM and his stooge COLIN MOSS have cobbled together a Moderati NEC list and he hopes to run in the GS stakes as well. Unfortunately for BUNTER many of the Mods he signed up were unaware of the deal struck by MOIRA CAMPBELL and PRIESTLEY last December at the time. Now they know and many are beginning to have second thoughts.
STUART will be lucky if he gets one nomination for the General Secretary post let alone the 25 required to stand. He won't get it from his own branch who've now kicked him off their BEC - the Fat Owl of the Remove was far too important to attend their meetings and they got the hump with him. But he does hope to challenge the PCS rule on the elections. It’s likely to be a futile gesture. When BARRY went to his lawyers over it he was advised that the NEC ruling was lawful and that a legal challenge would be unlikely to succeed.
CURRIE has an unlikely ally in the shape of MARK SERWOTKA himself. MAREK has long opposed the 25-nominations bar and has long argued that one should be enough – it is after all the rule for lay office. Lately JOHN MALONEY has been backing him up, pointing out that if there’s no contest at all – a distinct possibility as JAKE THE RAKE is struggling to get the magic 25 – it would leave the General Secretary for Life without any popular mandate.
The former MENDICANTS who dominate LUNITY would have nothing of it. The
25 noms bar is another form of faction control as only big factions like theirs can hope to deliver the required branch nominations. The high-caste UNDERLINGS and SECRET LEFTERS who want to follow LANNING’S footsteps know they have to crawl to get the blessing of the bloc they serve.
The CARCASE, furious at being cheated of their share at the rigged LUNITY conference, don’t like it either. But they’ve got next to nothing outside London and the glorious South. LEE ROCK learnt the hard way when he got the bums rush at his new Barnsley & Rotherham branch. He stood for Organiser, Office Rep and Conference delegate and failed miserably on all three counts.
As he will now be condemned to a life in "IB" for the next 12 months how much longer do you think he will remain in sunny South Yorkshire ?
A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently
St Augustine of Hippo