Northern Rock – use it to set up a Post Bank, or sell it to Tesco?

The government nationalised the ailing bank, formerly a building society, but only after many months of foot-dragging. And only on a temporary basis, natch.

Word is, Northern Rock could be sold to Tesco, handing the supermarket even greater power in the economy. Given that a majority of shareholders voted against plans to improve workers’ rights at the company, we know that Tesco isn’t very socially-responsible – so why give them a stake in the banking sector?

There’s a better alternative, as Louise Nousratpour reports:

A coalition of unions and businesses will step up their campaign for a “post bank” tomorrow with proposals that government-owned Northern Rock be used to offer services via post offices.

The group will publish plans arguing that their proposal would give a boost to the Post Office network and provide a vital community service.

A Post Bank would “revive and protect” post offices, support local communities and help smaller firms, especially as the banking system was still in “disarray,” they argue.

The report Delivering the post bank outlines four options the government could follow to establish the post bank. These range from using Northern Rock as a foundation for a mutually structured people’s bank to buying out the current relationship between the Post Office and Bank of Ireland.

Support for the idea of a post bank is growing within all three main political parties as well as among a range of campaign groups.

Postal workers union CWU leader Billy Hayes urged Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, who has been pushing for the part-privatisation of Royal Mail, to endorse this “vote-winning” initiative.

“We have met the challenge to create a workable model for the creation of a post bank,” he said.

“Our new report builds upon the conceptual idea and provides practical blueprints that will appeal to the general public who are disillusioned with the old, tired banking model.”

Federation of Small Businesses chairman John Wright said: “Northern Rock presents the government with a considerable opportunity and it should not consider selling it off privately, but instead should use it to establish a post bank and invest in the long-term future of the Post Office.”

Finance union Unite national officer Paul Reuter argued that the ambition should be to “secure the future of the workers in Northern Rock as well as securing the Post Office network while, at the same time, resolving the problem of financial exclusion and meeting the needs of small businesses.”

Dot Gibson of the National Pensioners Convention added: “Ministers need to rise to the challenge and secure a future for the post office network that serves local communities rather than pander to those who want to run it down and sell it off.”

Glad to be gay, ashamed to be Anglican?

Let us pray for the repentance of Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, who is a troubled soul.

If he’s not knocking England’s Muslims, it’s our gay compatriots…

The editorial in today’s Morning Star, A message to the bigots, on the bishop’s response to Pride.

There’s a message to all of us contained in the distasteful pronouncements of the Bishop of Rochester at the weekend.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali delivered his considered opinion of what he believes is a proper, Christian attitude towards those who do not share the conventional sexual orientation that his church espouses.

And that message was every bit as detestable as the Islamist fundamentalism that justifies jihad and terrorism as weapons in a battle for religious rectitude.

It bears about the same relationship to the attitude of everyday Christians as jihadism bears to the attitude of everyday Muslims. And that is none whatsoever.

We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude them, said Bishop Bigot.

“But they are going to have to repent and be changed.”

Everyone with any involvement in the peace and anti-war movements has had experience of working with active and committed Christians of all denominations or none.

And, from a socialist perspective, that experience is generally a positive and optimistic one, of working with people with a different motivation, but with a commitment to the human race, to the shared values of respect for life and of toleration of difference.

It’s a meeting of minds with people who do not necessarily share every principle that we espouse, but who have enough courage to join in solidarity over the things on which we agree and to develop mutual understanding on those points which may divide us.

It is a celebration of mutual respect and a working agreement that there are shared aims which are common to people of very different life experiences and have a value which transcends the proscriptions with which those who would divide us hedge us around.

There is a lesson for Dr Nazir-Ali in our shared experiences.

It is a lesson that he, and all the bigots of all religions or none should take to heart.

And that lesson is that the human race is greater by far than the narrow, prejudiced and perverted caricatures that the merchants of dogma would turn us into.

Half a million people gave the lie to the bishop at the weekend on the streets of London.

The queers and the queens, the bears and the dykes were joined by the trade unionists, the communists, the socialists and the militants from a dozen different fields in mutual solidarity to celebrate people’s right to live as they are, not as they are expected to be by their lords and masters, temporal or spiritual, in this narrow, proscriptive, capitalist society.

The Tories and the Establishment are falling over themselves to appear gay-friendly.

However, that’s not through tolerance of difference, that’s through a cold appreciation of the electoral advantages to be gained.

But take the mask off and you have the crusader, the figurehead who would thrust onto you the conformity of intolerance and the rigour of convention – provided that that conventionality suits the prejudices that still hold sway in a reactionary Establishment.

There’s a lesson for socialists in the bigotry of the bishop and the unity of the half-million people on the streets of London whom he railed against.

And that is that solidarity and tolerance are principles which unite us. Given unity, all the distasteful orthodoxies that are built to control us are powerless to do so.

That unity takes work to achieve, tolerance to establish and patience to build.

With it, we are invincible but, without it, the Nazir-Alis of this world will divide, weaken and dominate. It’s our choice.

Nationalised Express – public ownership for East Coast rail route

Great news, as it is a step towards ending the corporate domination of our railways which has cost us dearly both as taxpayers and passengers.

The general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union has backed the move:

“RMT welcomes todays announcement by the Government on the renationalisation of the East Coast route but this shouldn’t be a short term, crisis measure.

“It should be a long term solution to the chaos that privatisation has brought to the UK’s most lucrative rail franchise.

“RMT’s national AGM will send a clear message to the Government today that they should strip National Express of their other franchises and use this opportuinity to begin the process of renationalising the rail network,” said Bob Crow.

John McDonnell MP, RMT Parliamentary Group Convenor, said:

“The public control of the East Coast Mainline franchise should be a stepping stone to full and permanent public ownership.

“This East Coast franchise should be used as a public sector benchmark – and if the public sector performs better then let’s have other franchises back in public ownership too.”

The Green Party agrees, saying

The government should go further. Under cross-default clauses, the Transport secretary, Lord Adonis, could strip National Express of all its contracts, now that the group has handed back one franchise.

The Green Party remains the only major party in Britain to call for the full re-nationalisation of the railways.

Rupert Read, candidate for Norwich North and Green Party spokesperson on public services, said:

“Train privatisation, from the beginning, was a very flawed model. We can’t keep socialising private companies’ losses and privatising their profits. We need a national train network under direct public control and with full public accountability.”

“National Express must pay back whatever monies are outstanding from their rail franchise of the East Coast Main Line – it would be quite wrong for National Express to continue to profit on some lines, while the taxpayer has to foot the bill on others. To use the government’s own rhetoric, this should be a zero-tolerance issue.”

Sir Richard Branson, co-owner of the Virgin west coast franchise, has expressed an interest in bidding for the east coast franchise if it became available.

Read responded to this by saying: “Virgin would then have control of England-Scotland services, as well as London to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Doncaster. The entire idea of privatisation was to inject competition, and this would be substituting a public monopoly for a private monopoly. That cannot be allowed to happen, and as a Green MP for Norwich North, I would be absolutely steadfast in resisting it.”

Total victory as sacked strikers return to work

How outrageous! Workers voting by show of hands to withdraw their labour – no postal ballot, cooling-off period, or legal injunctions.

Democracy in action! For which hundreds of working men were sacked. But no more. The Morning Star reports on this historic victory for working people in this country:

Workers have voted to return to work at a jubilant mass meeting outside the Lindsey oil refinery.

Workers voted to return to work after union officials recommended they accept an agreement thrashed out during the marathon talks last week.

Addressing the hundreds of strikers gathered outside the refinery, GMB shop steward Kenny Ward described the deal as an “unprecedented victory” for trade unions.

The agreement was a “smack in the face for the employers, a realisation that they need to take a step back,” he added.

Yesterday’s vote marked the last act in a bitter dispute embroiling contract workers that led to unofficial strikes at power stations refineries across the country.

The men had taken unofficial action after complaining that 51 employees were being laid off at Lindsey, owned by energy giant Total, while other contractors on the site were hiring staff.

Thousands of workers across Britain came out in sympathy, with as many as 15 sites nationwide taking solidarity action.

Unions involved in the dispute said that their members’ objectives of finding other jobs for the sacked 51 workers, as well as rescinding the dismissal notices sent to 647 employees at the site who were on strike, had been met.

A guarantee of no victimisation against workers across the country who took sympathy action was also secured.

Welcoming the outcome, Unite assistant general secretary Les Bayliss said: “We hope that the lessons learned at Lindsey are not forgotten.

“We look forward to a new chapter of industrial relations in construction.”

The agreement also means that a Unite official has been appointed to represent Lindsey workers on a full-time basis until the end of the project, Mr Bayliss pointed out.

Within minutes of the vote, police had temporarily halted traffic as the workers carrying union banners and flags marched across the road and back on to the site.

Why the energy giants fail to pass on savings

The Campaign for Public Ownership has issued the following press release explaining why we shouldn’t be too surprised:

Here we go again. A newly published report by the watchdog Consumer Focus says that Britain’s privatised energy companies are over-charging customers and failing to pass on billions of pounds of savings made from the falling price of gas and electricity, it is reported. Consumer Focus states the fall in wholesale prices has saved energy companies around £1.6 billion, but this has not been reflected in average domestic bills.

Energy bills rose by 42% last year, with the average household paying £1,293 for the year.

The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.

The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That’s what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain’s long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.

THE CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC OWNERSHIP
Interviews and all media enquiries:
Email: publicownership@hotmail.co.uk

The Campaign for Public Ownership is a newly formed cross-party organisation which aims to harness public dissatisfaction with privatisation and campaign for a reversal of the disastrous policies of the last twenty-nine years. The Campaign seeks to expose the cost to the public of privatisation, and highlight the inefficiencies and profiteering of the privatised companies. We also strongly urge that the British government does not give a penny of taxpayers money to a privately owned company without the public receiving equity in that company. The Campaign will seek to counter the negative propaganda about public ownership put about by those with a vested financial interest in privatisation. It’s time to bring to an end to the Great Privatisation Rip-Off.
http://campaign4publicownership.blogspot.com/