Police Liaison Officers (PLOs) - the Friendly Face of the NFU!

I just wonder if many who were at the big London Badger March on 1st June 2013 and  remember the police videoing us as we marched through the streets of London? In this case the police officers were wearing orange bib Hi-Vis jackets and were attempting to capture good quality images of any Sabs they saw on the march. This was intelligence gathering in order that the government sponsored badger cull could proceed with many key activists monitored or taken out of the picture by surveillance.

Blue Bib PLOs Are They Your Friend?

Also badgerists who have been involved in organising Badger Marches have been contacted by local Police Liaison Officers (PLOs) in order to ‘help them’ keep safe during the march and they have been follow-up calls to seek and information out of these organisers.

Now a review of Operation Mansell, the policing of last year’s anti-fracking protests in Balcombe in Sussex. This was the one that the only Green MP Caroline Lucas was arrested along with her teenage son. Well a police review has confirmed that Police Liaison Officers (PLOs), usually identified by wearing blue-bibbed Hi-Vis jackets, now routinely deployed at protests and demonstrations, are now seen by senior police officers as playing a ‘pivotal role’ in gathering intelligence on protesters. In some cases the police have been accused of gathering intelligence and intimidating protesters after a film shows plainclothes police officers visiting a fracking campaigner's home and questioning her on her involvement with the anti-fracking movement and association with UK Uncut!

PLO - Weapon Out And Ready For Action!

Hertfordshire Police and Essex Police have carried out a review of Sussex police handling of the Balcombe anti-fracking protests against the company Cuadrilla and have concluded that the Police Liaison Officers (PLTs) in Sussex displayed good practices and outcomes that have had a dramatic and positive impact on the policing of protest in Sussex in line with our arguments concerning their effectiveness.

We should remember that it was Hertfordshire Police that also concluded that Avon & Somerset constabulary achieved “Best Practice” by having members of both the NFU and the private cull company present in the police HQ Control Room.

One can only conclude that both Avon & Somerset and Gloucestershire constabularies are preparing for future protests by anti-badger cull protesters but are starting to share strategy and intelligence with other forces around the country; the term “Big Brother is watching you” has become a reality!

I have not been to the Gloucestershire zone, but they are a set of Vehicle Number Plate Registration Capture cameras on the A358 as you leave Taunton and this could signal to the police that for example the Manchester Sabs are now entering the West Somerset cull zone.

Vehicle ID Cameras on the A358 Near the Cross Keys Roundabout

The government have funded the policing of the cull in support of the NFU who just want the badgers shot dead by their cull contractors using the police as a private security company.

So when we see the police out in the cull zone are we looking at a hijacked police force operating under the terms and conditions of the NFU sponsored badger cull?

Somerset Badger Police

As a Labour party member and local town councillor with a keen interest in animal welfare I chose to attend the Badger Cull zone in West Somerset and partake in the lawful and peaceful Somerset Badger Patrols that were running each night during the cull period.

We often heard in the press that Avon & Somerset constabulary were keen to allow peaceful protest during the cull period and that they would remain neutral as they policed the cull area.

Spotlight: Badger and Sue Mountstevens

However this would appear so far removed from the truth as meetings with the NFU commenced at the Bath & West show in May 2013, three months before the cull started. 
The shooting started on the 26 August 2013 and continued for a six week period ending on the 7 October. During this period they were no meeting with any anti-badger groups, but by then Avon & Somerset Constabulary had agreed to have personnel from both the NFU and the newly set-up NFU sponsored private limited company HNV Associates Ltd in the control room at police HQ. 

This cull company HNV Associates lists its nature of business as Hunting, trapping and related service activities!

One may begin to wonder about Avon & Somerset constabulary deciding to have personnel from the Countryside Alliance during any fox hunting related policing they may undertake?

Hunting Scene

They are various other grouping within the countryside that has the view that wildlife is a nuisance and the badger in particular in relation to the many pheasant shoots. Now you only have to look at the locations of the two badger cull zones in West Somerset and Gloucestershire; both these locations are home too many pheasant shooting estates and are awash with an array eager and keen of blood sports enthusiasts all to ready to participate in the cull. 

With the advent of solar farms and bio-fuel crops being developed, then in the rush for quick profits the overarching desire is to have no legally protected species of wildlife for many countryside businesses, our native wildlife simply gets in the way of countryside profits.

But perhaps the worst aspect of the Badger Cull is the way that the shooting has been allocated to private companies like HNV Associates Ltd and then to individuals. 
These companies are then able to recruit the local blood sports hobbyists; who generally tend to be lampers, shooters, gamekeepers, terrier-men and supporters of the local hunts. Many will also be members of the Countryside Alliance and so the circle of evil is complete in the countryside.

Quad Bikes racing around the countryside many unmarked and unregisters loaded with armed men whose sole purpose is to kill badgers the iconic symbol of all the Wildlife Trusts and a protected species, fully aided and supported by Avon & Somerset constabulary!

Hunting Quad Bikes in the Countryside!

Many of these Quad Bikes are classed as farm vehicles and so required no tax or insurance but often they will be seen driving along main roads and country lanes, tailgating any strange vehicles they come upon. Are the police interested? Of source not! And just to add a good pinch of salt into our wound, we as tax payers pay around £50 each toward their firearm licences!!

Just How Many Cullers Can You Get On A Quad Bike?

But to return to the Badger Cull, following the six weeks of shooting madness a week of calm reigned until the three week extension was rolled out and the shooting started again as the badgers had moved the goalposts and not enough were killed.

It was during this period that the PCC Sue Mountstevens did manage to meet with some the the anti-badger people. Better late than never some may say. But by this time serious policing issues were beginning to emerge. Some examples were cull contractors shooting over protesters heads at close range and a 999 call managed in part by NFU personnel in the police control room, where the victim of assault by cull contractors was re-classified as the suspect had a full vehicle search carried out. What this Avon & Somerset's two headed coin in play, where heads the badger gets it?

Anti badger cull protesters vehicles attacked by explosive rook scarers, just to add to the noise, distress and madness in the darkness of West Somerset's cull zone. The fact that interfering with these devices was an offence under the Explosives Act just did not register with the police as again heads the badger side gets it was the usual cry from the police. Just image how long a prison sentence any badger protester would get for letting of a rook scarer, The key would be thrown away!

Somerset Badger Patrol

I was also concerned that from speaking to a number of fellow badger patrol collogues that a high level of personnel searches, spot checks on vehicles; some for having the wrong shade of red on tail lights were carried out. Again I assume that this is the reason that the police were taking down anti badger cull protesters vehicle registration numbers in Williton, car park (where Somerset Badger Patrol met each night) and then distributed these lists at each nightly police briefing. One can only assume that this was to allow police officers on duty to stop and search and harassment Badger Patrol members. It has also been commented on that both the NFU and the HNV Associates were also collecting unfamiliar vehicle registration numbers in the cull zone.

Again it would appear that Avon and Somerset constabulary may be acting as agents, stewards or marshals of the NFU and the private limited cull company HNV Associates and it begs the question as to whether any personnel data on anti badger cull protesters and there vehicles were exchanged between the NFU and Avon & Somerset constabulary?

I and others did meet the Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens in March 2014 at Williton car park along with fellow Somerset Badger Patrol members and we did ask about the presence of the NFU officials in the control room. She stated that that decision was made by the Chief Constable (who is currently suspended from duty) and she cannot comment on operations issues. However the police and PCC would have you believe a picture of a well-managed control room. But the police’s own report gives a very different picture. It suggests that the control room was a chaotic place, where people were shouting across each other and conflicting information was flying back and forth between badger killers and police personnel.

PCC Meets Somerset Badger Patrol

The PCC, Sue Mountstevens is now eager to met with anti badger cull protesters in a post cull attempt to appear to show an even handed approach to the badger cull policing, but this seems nothing more than PR exercise as already Avon & Somerset constabulary have now stated that having NFU personnel in there control room allowed “Best Practice” for the policing of the badger cull. The NFU personnel gave real-time information on the shooting and God knows what else for the police to act on. The classification of “Best Practice” is being quoted while numerous complaints; both internal and external to the IPPC are still outstanding simply beggars belief.

I am gravely concerned that organisations such as the Nation Farmers Union and its private owned company HNV Associates Ltd working so closely with our local police force as the Nation Farmers Union is nothing more than a Trade Association and political pressure group working for the benefit of a small unelected and unaccountable rural minority of large rich landowners.

Avon & Somerset constabulary appear to have been drawn into a political role during this badger cull. It is no secret that the “Holy Trinity” of the Countryside Lobby groups is made up of the National Farmers Union (NFU), Countryside Alliance (CA) and the Countryside Land & Business Association (CLA) an all of these groups are 100% in support of the badger cull and a massive majority in favor of a Conservative government.

If anyone did think that having a PCC would allow openness, honesty and transparency into our police force then in this case nothing could be further from the truth. Sue Mountstevens was a magistrate and was a member of the now disbanded Police Authority and a local business woman. One could say she is part of the establishment and will not rock the boat when it comes to policing controversial countryside issues.

We only need to look back to the policing involved during the miners strike some thirty years ago. Yet again another black period for British policing. Are we starting to see history repeating itself as the police, government and its allies like the NFU work together to push through an ugly agenda? Is a new Water Cannon on order for Avon & Somerset constabulary to flush these pesky Badger protesters into the Bristol Channel?

Policing the Miners Strike 1984

Are they only one side to the badger cull policing where both the senior management police team and the PCC meet and spin a united PR front. The Chief Constable who made the decision to allow the NFU and its cull contractors into his HQ control room is currently suspended on another issue. However support for this decision appears to be widespread within the police senior management team and of course the PCC has a 'get out of jail card' with the line: "I cannot possibly comment on operational matters."

Is this what you expected for those 19% who did bothered to vote for a PCC in Avon & Somerset?

To me it looks like Bank Account policing where the police support those with the most money.

The Bloody Pro-Hunting Lobby Group VoteOK Comes Clean!

Reading in the local press regarding the antics of the pro-hunt group VoteOK, I am gratified as a Labour party member that this activity is now out in the open at long last.
No more secretly trying to remove anti-hunt Lib Dem and Labour MP’s in the sleepy marginals. 

Fighting To Get Hunting Legal Again

For about a decade now this group has been out and about getting pro-hunt MPs elected in the marginal seats. They claim that they managed to swing 36 marginal seats to pro-hunt Tories at the last election.

During previous elections many marginal seats were swamped by the traditional tweed clad countryside types promoting the failures in the NHS citing too many Labour appointed managers in place, or attempting to blame the global financial crisis on Labour's mismanagement. Rural Post Offices and local shop closures down to nasty Gordon Brown? But hunting was never mentioned during these door step and leafleting campaigns. The hunters were out just to get their man elected as an MP who would vote to repeal the Hunting Act and warm to the countryside land owning elite.

All political parties have their backers and funders, but perhaps the most covert is the Holy Trinity of the countryside; namely the National Farmers Union (NFU), Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the Countryside Alliance (CA). They draw on support from all major political parties but in David Cameron they see as their true Messiah. The Prime Minster is a Fox Hunter, Deer Stalker and game shooter, married into the land owning aristocracy. Even his chancellor George Gideon Oliver Osborne is part of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and heir to the Osborne baronetcy.

Gone now are the Wind Farms, they interfere with hunting and confuse the pheasants and of course spoil the manor house views, but in their place are the vast Solar Farms looking like a lake of still water. Turning prime agricultural land into an industrial wasteland, while providing expensive green electricity to the masses at a healthy profit to the landowner.

Nuclear power is a Gas! As the Lady Lieutenant of Somerset has been able to lease her fields to the French EDF for a staggering £50M and at the end of the day will get the fields back!

The NFU get their Badger Culls to help the shooting estates get rid of the pesky badger to alleviate their problems with game birds and bird feeders.

Green field development will get the go-ahead when the landowners see a healthy profit.

Industrial farming will step up a gear as the sights are set on the Asian markets, barring a few teething problems with dodgy cheese hygiene issues. The countryside will then soon be full of battery cows milked three times a day, veal creates as far as the eye can see and pig pen arrays being the new crystal maze of horror.

In this scheme of things wildlife has no monetary value and the countryside belongs to the landowners who with taxpayers money will milk the life out of it for themselves.

I spy with the kids will now sound like as follows as the family travels down a typical A road; 
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘V’; 
>>Veal Crate Arrays;
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘P’; 
>>Pig Pen Arrays;
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘M’; 
>>Mega Cow Sheds;
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘B’; 
>>Bird Feeders for as far as the eye can see;
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘T’; 
>>Tree; sorry I cannot see one as they were all chopped down to allow the light in for the Solar Farms.

Russell Brands comments that all parties are the same is beginning to ebb away now as clear blue water separates Labour and the Tories, but no one now knows what the Liberal Democrats stand for anymore and does anyone really care after there long night of love with the Tories!

You just need to look at the environment and flooding and the way Ian Liddle-Grainger reacted to understand where his loyalty lies. The flooding was not down to cuts in budgets or the way maze crops are managed or the deforestation of uplands to allow more intensive sheep farming. The floods were down to the actions of the Labour head of the Environment Agency who failed to stop the rain from falling or was as UKIP stated, gay marriage to blame!

VoteOK, lets make hunting legal again; vote Tory, your countryside expects it!

There is now a clear choice between Labour and the Tories now.

There is an alternative!

The Destruction of our Wildlife – The Holy Trinity on a Mission!

This has been a year where the Holy Trinity of the Countryside lobby groups have joined forces to destroy as much of our wildlife as possible.

The Holy Trinity of Countryside Blood!

Countryside Alliance (CA)

Country Land and Business Association (CLA)

National Farmers Union (NFU)

These are the big three countryside lobby groups who make Trade Unions look like a Sunday School picnic.

The National Trust holds out little hope as with nearly 4 million members only about 3% bother to vote so the Blood Sports Lobby have control. With Fox, Stag hunting often taking place on trust land. Even the only estate to trial badger vaccination promotes shooting of both game and wildfowl in association with the British Association fro Shooting and Conservation (BASC). This is the Killerton Estate near Exeter. Badger culling will be down to if they can get away with it; i.e. if so few complain then to support their tenner farmers and fall in line with the 'Big Three'!

Britain has very little land that can be considered part of the public trust. A third of the countries land remains under the ownership of the aristocracy; a set that both Prime Minster David Cameron and Environment Minster Owen Paterson belong. 
In Portugal the aristocracy pride themselves with Bullfighting on horseback.

But how can anyone of sound mind think of bring hunting back in a legal state; however I do not think that the Archbishop will raise any objections and perhaps even offer to bless the hounds at some of the country’s premier meets. As was the case with the local vicar of the Quorn and Cottesmore hunt as they are going to try hunting on a Sunday. The blessing could read as follows as the hounds move off:-

“All creatures great and small”

“The Lord God did make them all”

“We the hunt will go out and kill them large”

“And kill there cubs who are so small”

“The weak and the fit and the frail"

"We will seek them out and dispatch them all”

Some will tell you its Wildlife Management!

Just so many people that own land seem to spend so much time destroying the wildlife that live on it.  We must raise our voices for theses beings that do not have a voice. A poor bear confined in a dirty cage for peoples amusement and on the other hand the firefighter who nurses a frightened kola bear.

I was in Taunton last summer when Team Badger was there to raise awareness of the coming Badger Cull. Present at that meeting was SaveMe campaigner Brian May and the Chief Executive of the RSPCA Gavin Grant.

The one single item of note from that meeting was stated by Somerset's own Gavin Grant; “If this Badger Cull goes ahead then we as a nation place no value on our wildlife. This will be the beginning of the end of wildlife preservation and protection.”

A Typical Hunt So Called Trail Hunting!

This hunt is following a trial laid along the middle of the road, just follow the white lines in the road.

I quote from the West Country based Vice Chairman of the Countryside Alliance Lord Mancroft; writing in the Hunting Magazine, Spring 2008, while Labour were still in power:-

"The reason that we shall win the battle to preserve hunting and our way of life for future generations is simple. We will outlast our enemies. We will keep our hounds and horses, keep our wonderful staff, keep our communities together, keep our farmers' and landowners' support, and we shall put together the necessary resources, both financial and otherwise, to achieve all of this, and we shall continue to do this until this Labour Government falls."

Then the Holy Trinity appear to join together to launch the VoteOK grouping to effect the political outcome at general elections!

VoteOK was set up by members of the hunting fraternity in 2001 to marshal an army of hunt supporters to flood in and coordinate the ousting of marginal sitting Labour or Lib Dem anti-hunt MPs. They have been in operation over the last three general elections and can be viewed as a pro-Tory support group. They dress in normal clothes and never mention hunting to potential voters as they know it will be a vote loser.

But to return to Badgers and why where they culled? The famer needed someone to blame for the mess British agricultural is in and so the government opted for the NFU plan of ‘Blame the Badger’.

Badgers - The Farmers Scapegoat

It should be noted that the NFU who are driving these 'culls' are an unelected quango who represent, only 18% of farmers and are predominantly City money-men and yet, they are allowed to dictate government agricultural and environmental policy!

Badgers - They Just Get in the Way of Profits

These culls serve no-one but this undemocratic, feudal minority who believe they are above the law of the land. It is now generally accepted that during the last three decades with intensive farming and poor bio-security, bovine TB has seeped out into the neighbouring wildlife. So having infecting the badger, they now want to kill them; it’s every which way but loose for the poor badgers!

The two Badger Cull tails have already taken place and now they have been hailed a success and plans to roll out more next year with gassing being considered as a cheaper option for farmers.

BUT Again: Why cull baggers?
The Holy Trinity of Countryside Blood!

Countryside Alliance (CA)

Country Land and Business Association (CLA)

National Farmers Union (NFU)

CLA - Planning made easier for Solar farms/holiday homes
          Expansion of Game Bird Shooting
NFU - No badgers, no bio-security improvements needed; 
           Cheaper to product milk without wildlife considerations
CA -   Another Countryside Blood Sport to Enjoy
          Increase in fox numbers with less badgers, so good 
          news for the return of Fox Hunting

As DEFRA has also contacted the Law Commission to review the range of animal welfare legislation so with the powerful NFU driving the agenda forward we could see the return to the days when even healthy vaccinated badgers on Wildlife Trust Nature Reserves could be invaded by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) staff, an executive agency working on behalf DEFRA, to remove all the badgers on Wildlife Trust reserves. This would probably be via gassing the setts.  Our wildlife has no value these days!

BREAKING NEWS:

Wildlife groups have accused the government of caving in to big farmers over planned changes to farm subsidies in England. The government proposed increasing the proportion of farm payments transferred to protecting wildlife from 9% to 15%. But it backed it down to 12% after the big landowning farmers said this was not fair.

NEXT YEAR: Who knows what the weather will bring but one thing is for certain under this coalition government our wildlife will be under even more pressure as the large industrial farms gear up for the new deals in China. Badger culls moving out across the country as this icon wild animal so badly treated in the past is once again targeted. As the world resources are fought over and people fight to survive wildlife will suffer.

Animals need a voice, ours and the others who care. Doing nothing is no longer an option as this war on wildlife continues.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhi.

Badger Culling Spin

The new farm minister George Eustice says the government intends to cull badgers in many more areas next year, even though the two pilot culls failed to hit their six-week target with both zones needed to be extended and with a high police cost. Mr. Eustice said we are minded to go on next year and roll the cull out more widely he stated at the NFU tenant farmers conference on Thursday the 7th of November 2013. George Eustice won his seat with a majority of 66 votes so I suspect he can kiss his political career goodbye at the next election but perhaps his parting gesture will be launching a few badger culls in Cornwall?

The New Badger Killer Farming Minster

Mr. Eustice said also that DEFRA was keen to learn the lessons from both pilot zones and would be looking carefully at the “quite different results” when both culls had completed, as the government was inclined to roll out the culls to other TB hotspot areas. One assume from pressure from the NFU who would like to see gassing and snaring employed to kill more badgers cheaply that free shooting and cage trapping and shooting currently do.

An experimental investigation was, in fact, carried out re-fox numbers increasing in direct response to badger culling, and it was found that over a period of 2 years, "mean fox density increased by over 50% in the culled areas within two years. This could please the Countryside Alliance as they will see this as a means to overturn the hunting ban as all our pro-cull ministers, including Mr Paterson and Mr Cameron, are keen fox hunters.

As DEFRA has also contacted the Law Commission to review the range of animal welfare legislation so with the NFU driving the agenda forward we could see the return to the days when even healthy vaccinated badgers on Wildlife Trust Nature Reserves could be invaded by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) staff, an executive agency working on behalf DEFRA, to remove badgers on Wildlife Trust reserves. This would probably be via gassing setts. This would be a return to the bad old days when the then Minster of Agriculture, Fishers and Food (MAFF) would be allowed onto any farm to gas with cyanide all the badgers setts.


It should be noted that the NFU who are driving these 'culls' are an unelected quango who represent, only 18% of farmers and are predominantly City investors and yet, they are allowed to dictate government agricultural and environmental policy!


These culls serve no-one but this undemocratic, feudal minority who believe they are above the law of the land.And now we hear that bovine TB has spread to the north east in County Durham, did the badgers use a rover ticket to get there? No of course not, badgers are banned from trains, but perhaps cattle with bovine TB from the South West were transported up!

Reading in the Farmers Guardian that North Wiltshire Tory MP and hunting fanatic James Gray stated that “One of my farmers has lost his entire herd on three separate occasions. He is reported to be driving a bus at the moment and going through terrible stress.”

Fox Hunting Mad Tory

I only hope that this new bus driving farmer is not on the school run as is he really in a fit state to be diving a bus with children onboard?

But on a more serious note the statements above and similar have been widely used to blame the badger for all the failings of the farming industry under the dictatorship of the NFU which has total control over DEFRA and Natural England.

The current bovine TB problem is down to restocking from West Country herds, which traditionally have a higher rate of bovine TB; after the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001.

If indeed this farmer has lost his entire herd on three separate occasions then what on earth is wrong on his farm? I have seen no research on how badgers infect cattle other than a 1971 experiment which involved placing cattle in a small concrete pen with a dozen infected badgers. This cruel experiment resulted in one calf getting infected after several months confinement and the government agency at the time; MAFF concluded at the time that this route of infection was negligible. It is now known that modern farming practices have allowed bovine TB to spill out into the wildlife and with poor testing and uncontrolled cattle movements many farms will retain the disease for many months as the cycle repeats during restocking under poor bio-security and testing measures.

Badgers will soon become rare footage on BBC Autumn and SpringWatch as the farmers percussion continues. Farmers have allowed the bovine TB problem to spread into the wildlife and now they seek to destroy there victims of their messy industry and all at the tax payers expense.

Tories and Their Paymasters Wage War on the Unions Again!

David Cameron has launched an inquiry into trade union tactics after the dispute at Grangemouth petrochemical plant. This enquiry will report back to give the Tories a Union Bashing opportunity nearer the General Election. A living wage is fast becoming a distance dream under this government.

As a Labour party and Unite member all I see is the continuation of Thatchers policies as council houses were flogged off and all the public utilities sold to the highest bidder. This is continuing as the Royal Mail was sold off last month. The Tories will always try and scare people about the connection between Labour and the Trade Unions, but Labour was born from the despair of dreadful working conditions a century ago and we are moving backwards as a society as the British Chamber of Commerce pressures the government for company tax breaks using the excuse that it will help companies take on more staff. If that was the case then why not move the companies HQ oversees, like Google and Startbucks then pay no tax at all!

They will be no enquiry on the donations to the Tories from bankers, hedge fund managers and the bosses of big business as they seek to chip away at hard fought workers terms and conditions in the race to the bottom for British workers. No enquiry on the landowners who make millions from Solar Farms and Wind Turbine Sites. No enquiry on companies who recruit overseas workers to undercut and displace local employees.

This new attack on Trade Unions is spearheaded by the posh Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude. He was the one that encouraged people to store up petrol at the last tanker drivers dispute, resulting in a mother being badly burned in her home after taking his ‘strike busting’ advice.

The 'Jerry Can Jerk' Maude

Francis Maude is among a number of Government ministers amassing vast, taxpayer-funded nest eggs.But while the millionaire minster can look forward to a potential £43,000-plus a year income in his old age, he is cutting schemes for nurses, teachers and public sector workers. The Tory minister ruthlessly slashing the pensions of millions of public sector workers could be in line to pocket a £731,000 retirement pot.
The shocking sum is almost eight times the average £5,600 civil service employee’s pot.
If anyone thought that the planned strikes were nothing more than an inconvenient regarding child care that day or just public sector workers crying ‘Wolf’ over their pension changes then they need to think again.
We have in this collation government a collection of millionaires, members of the aristocracy and wealthy business people waging an all out war on the British workers. David Cameron him self is worth £30M and George Osbourne £5M but he will inherit a lot more. Nick Clegg and his Spanish lawyer wife and simply loaded and so far removed from the day to day financial crisis most people face daily.
Now whether these workers are highway engineers, dustbin men, nurses, teachers or headmasters; they are being targeting for the mistakes of the bankers, hedge fund managers and others in the financial sector.
Good public sector pension are in the front line of the battlefield to be overrun then they will move on to the conditions in work place.
As the Business Secretary Vince Cable and the Chancellor George Osborne announced that the Government intends to start the dismantling many of the hard fought and long-held employment rights won over many years so that companies could have a more ‘flexible’ and ‘dismissive’ approach towards their employees; i.e. to make it easier for bosses to sack there workers. If these measures gets on the statute books then every employer will be able to tear up their HR policies and replace them with the simple phrase:- "Do as you are told or you are fired". This is just another example of the government being paid by business and applying policy for business needs only. These changes will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of workers to bring cases of victimisation, unfairness and bullying at work and these changes will affect all of us today and our children and grandchildren tomorrow, with all the hard won advances in the working environment starting to evaporate as uncertainty and insecurity become the norm in the workplace.
It should come as no surprise to people that the Labour party was born from the Trade Union movement, that’s the reason the Labour party came into existence. People today often assume that they can look after their own working environment and take the required action to resolve any disputes or misunderstandings between themselves and their employer. But going back a few centuries and following the abolition of slavery the common British worker became the new workhouse slaves as the mighty industrial revolution unfolded. The British Empire emerged and great wealth for some was created but this was at a cost as the largely rural population moved into the new industrial towns to look for work.
The birth of the Trade Union movement stems from the Tolpuddle Martyrs, at the turn of the 19th life as an English farm worker in the 1830s was dismal. Rent and a basic diet of tea, bread and potatoes would cost a typical family 13 shillings a week. But exploitative landowners paid their workers as little as 9, 8, even 7 shillings a week. But when, in 1834, labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset met to form a 'Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers’ and demanded 10 shillings a week. However a local landowner reported them, and under an obscure 1797 law they were arrested and transported to Australia.

Now the Prime Minster plans to re-negotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU in our interest, but the truth is that he will want a deal that will go against the interests of ordinary working people. Mr Cameron himself has said, “I do not believe it is appropriate for social and employment legislation to be dealt with at the European level. It will be a top priority for the next Conservative government to restore social and employment legislation to national control.” The Tory vision for the future of Europe sounds like turning the clock back to the days before working people had their basic rights guaranteed. Some of the hundreds of rights at work that have been negotiated between European governments, and are guaranteed by European Law that could be at risk if David Cameron gets his way include: 
Four weeks paid leave
Rights for mothers (not to be sacked for being pregnant, paid time off for ante-natal appointments)
Equal treatment for workers employed through an agency
Tea and lunch breaks during the working day
The right to a day off every weekend.


All the Liberal Democrats like Vince Cable, Danny Alexander and Yeovil's David Laws as Liberal should be ashamed of the company they have been keeping.

The Lib Dems Gave Cameron the Key to Downing Street!

How can a true liberal party seek to crack down on basic human rights? The long battle over the rights of employees is centuries old and littered with deaths from the Tolpuddle deportation, starvation, illness and dangerous working environments.Trade Unions have been campaigning for improved protections for UK workers who are currently the easiest and cheapest to sack in the whole of the EU. The Labour party has been too timid to openly support the people that paid to set up the party in the first place and these same people are still continuing to support the Labour party financially. No one wants a series of wild cat strikes and a rerun to industrial warfare of the 70’s, but neither do people want the eradication of the basic employee rights. 


At the dawn of what was hoped would be a new age at the end of World War Two with the birth of the NHS, most European countries included trade union involvement in all industrial matters with boardroom representation, but in the UK the then Federation of British Industry (FBI); now renamed and rebranded as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) wanted no role formally from the trade union movement. The Labour party was the only way forward for workers to be included in the process, unlike our EU partners and this still remains so today as British workers become the poor man of Europe.
These changes will affect all workers today and our children and grandchildren tomorrow and into the future. With all the hard won advances in the working environment starting to evaporate as uncertainty and insecurity become the norm in the workplace. The rich get richer on the backs of the poorest and least able in society, where Trade Unions are a dirty word and get in the way of companies profits.

Ordinary British workers need safety, security and fairness in the workplace and a decent place to live and build a future for themselves and there family.