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 - February 2013
Constant activity in harassing the enemy may lead to reprisals at first, and. for this reason is sometimes neglected, but, if persevered in, it always results in an ultimate mastery, it gives the troops a healthy interest and wholesome topics of conversation, and it achieves the double
purpose of raising the morale of our own troops whilst lowering that of the enemy. Every effort should be made to obtain the mastery over the enemy's sniper...
The first signs of Spring. Water-logged trenches. Daffodils in No Mans Land and the nervous preparation of the ballot for another offensive. And once again we've got no-one to rely on apart from ourselves.
At Falconcrest the maps are being dusted and the plans are being drawn up. This time the objective is a three-fold offensive on Pay, Pensions and Terms and Conditions. The grandees are mobilising to try and get a morale-boosting majority for the Big Push and this time there's clearly no alternative with the Coalition Government as they might talk, but refuse to negotiate. When they're caught with their pants down, they quietly capitulate. It's either black or white, but no negotiation.
Last month the union won two minor victories. The first was when the Department for Transport lifted the threat of compulsory redundancy for hundreds of staff to head off a strike, industrial action had been timed to coincide with compulsory redundancy notices going out on 1st February as part of a plan to axe 900 jobs in the DVLA local offices earmarked for closure. This has now been postponed and will be subject to further talks. We have also secured a no compulsory redundancy agreement in the Driving Standards Agency until 31 March 2014. Management has agreed to further negotiations, which will also include the sickness absence policy.
The second came when the DWP only narrowly won its national ballot against compulsory redundancies threatened against 45 of its lowest paid staff. A year's meaningful work has been found for them and the threat withdrawn (well, for at least a year).
So we have seen wins in skirmishes, but the battle is yet to be won.
The Tory-Liberal Democrat government is hell-bent against trade unionists. We've had no pay rises, we've had pay cuts, and we will be due for another cut in April. Conditions are being eroded at an alarming rate. Pensions are already fucked. And when they take away ail the lay officials' facility time, we're fucked too. They'll talk about austerity and need to curb "union power". They might even dribble a little bit for representation of a member whose case will fall because they've changed the T&C's.
Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted. That time is now. Others don't care because they're counting the days to their pension. But do we really want to leave government departments in such a state that when we retire the services we expected to have on tap are no longer there?
If we are ill, don't we want an effective NHS? DoH is a government department and it's failing due to lack of proper staffing, allowing the horrors such as Stafford. The arguments put forward by PCS are legitimate and affect all members (past, present and future). The ballot is a bargaining tool. If we win it by a big majority, we are unlikely to be called to action.
This is about the civil service pay, terms, conditions and facility time, not the start of the Trotskyist revolution. Historically we've voted for action in predecessor Unions whether the right or left was in power (most often right wing). We have to "go it alone" because we're THE Civil Service union.
We MUST win this ballot by a huge majority or we really are fucked.
So life goes on. It's AGM time and the struggle to retain control of the union at national and departmental level moves into top gear. Inside the BIG TENT it looks like the SOCIALIST WANKERS may implode over a leadership cover-up scandal involving MARTIN "COMRADE DELTA" SMITH,
a one-time member of CPSA, who is alleged to have raped a fellow comrade, but was found innocent after an internal investigation by a SWP committee that included his current partner. Nah, not investigated by the Plod or put before the obviously aristocratic Courts (too bourgeois,) Their Kangaroo Court will take on any crime, and find in favour of he who sits on their national committee. Just Google his name and a few other details like SWP and RAPE for the full sordid details or check out his exploits at REDFRIARS SCHOOL at:
http://www.heartfield.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/redfriars/Billy_Delta.htm
If you don't get all the gags ask a SOCIALIST WANKER to explain it for you - if you can find one who hasn't already jumped ship.
These days the SWP counts for nothing in PCS and the grandees have no worries about the NEC. They'll sweep the board as usual. JAKE WILDE has been putting himself around a bit in his old Revenue haunts and though he's made a good impression he will be lucky to cling on as a 4TM supported "independent".
JOHN McINALLY, the power behind the throne and PCS VP, is drumming up the YES vote - everywhere apart from his own BRISTOL branch. He hasn't even bothered to organise site meetings, or ensure his BEC is doing so in his usual absence at this time of year, haranguing Branch AGMs the length and breadth of the country while simultaneously canvassing for new members for Left Unity, The SP and the SSP.
Meanwhile LEON BAUGH is moving a step forward to fulfil his ultimate ambition by preparing to run for the DGS post when HUGH LANNING officially fucks off in May following some minor expenses misunderstandings.
BOFF faces no serious challenge from 4TM or INDEPENDENT LEFT even though their leaders all despise him.
JAKE WILDE certainly does want to be a full-time officer but he's not going to help his cause by fronting a no-hoper4TM campaign led by the likes of ROB BRYSON and HOWARD FULLER while TROTSKY'S INDEPENDENT TRADERS simply have no-one of national standing these days to bag the protest vote. BOFF, of course, dreams of an unopposed shoe-in, which would mean he would be a heart-beat away from the top job, in more senses than one. That would, of course, leave his AGS post vacant and given our troubled times that's probably how it should be left for the foreseeable future.
Now that's there's no prospect of a merger with UNITE or anyone else for that matter due in no small part to the precarious financial situation of PCS, the grandees are having to face up to Plan B - and one of them has to be cutting senior full-time posts. Not filling the AGS is painless, in ye olde days CPSA created the AGS post to allow the General Secretary to give another job for the boys. And we have every confidence that BOFF, despite his lack of social skills, could easily step up to the plate and take on the little work that LANNING did, plus his old job.
Cutting Annual Conference by a day will not save much dough but it will strengthen our bargaining position over facility time. Scrapping the free diary is a good start and Song overdue but why not put the magazine online and save a fortune on printing and distribution? If needs must, then some of the regional offices and the full-timers based there will have to go as well...
But the petty struggles in the groups by individuals whose attachment to the national factions is defined simply by what they are against, rather than for the strength of the perceived influence of the national bloc, supersede the lofty principles they pretend to uphold in their election addresses.
Former PCS Group Editor ALAN SMITH (PFL passim), for instance, is circulating a story to his few remaining friends up north that LEE ROCK is in the pay of Special Branch. Apparently he has this as a "proven fact" from one of ROCK's erstwhile comrades in the Independent Left. (Who appear to be 'courting' him following his all too predictable fall out with the former MENDICANTS in the Socialist Party). He was never much more than a placeman for JANE AITCHESON and it was obvious once she and hubby were purged SMITH would be under attack soon after.
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horsel
Richard III, by William Shakespeare Tesco edition 2013
Other Stuff by Barrabas which does not include references to Richard III, horsemeat, or the Pope. Errr... Ooh, ...nope errm, struggling now... I know - bad day...
Think you are having a bad day?
Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned-out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem test revealed that the man died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a positive identification. Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clothed diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.
It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the man went diving off the coast, some 20 miles from the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean and emptied at the site of the forest fire.
You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next, he was doing the breast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air.
Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed but keep reading....
Still think you're having a bad day?
A man was working on his motorcycle on the patio, his wife nearby in the kitchen. While racing the engine, the motorcycle accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding onto the handlebars, was dragged along as it burst through the glass patio doors.
His wife, hearing the crash, ran in the room to find her husband cut and bleeding, the motorcycle, and the shattered patio door. She called for an ambulance and, because the house sat on a fairly large hill, went down the several flights of stairs to meet the paramedics and escort them to her husband.
While the attendants were loading her husband, the wife managed to right the motorcycle and push it outside. She also quickly blotted up the spilled gasoline with some paper towels and tossed them into the toilet.
After being treated and released, the man returned home, looked at the shattered patio door and the damage to his motorcycle. He went into the bathroom and consoled himself with a cigarette while attending to his business. About to stand, he flipped the butt between his legs. The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming. Finding him lying on the bathroom floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks, legs and groin, she once again phoned for an ambulance. The same paramedic crew was dispatched.
As the paramedics carried the man down the stairs to the ambulance they asked the wife how He had come to burn himself. She told them. They started laughing so hard, one slipped, the stretcher dumping the husband out. He fell down the remaining stairs, breaking his arm.
Still having a bad day? Just remember, it could be worse...
The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both...
Still think you are having a bad day?
A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically, almost in a dancing frenzy, with some kind of wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places. Up to that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.
STILL think you're having a bad day?
Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany .. Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly. The two hapless protesters were trampled to death.
What? STILL having a bad day??
Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with ‘return to sender' stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it - and was blown to bits.
There now, feeling better?
HAVE A NICE DAY Y'ALL
OOPS Nearly forgot
How to greet Ian Duncan Smith
