Welsh-language teaching union UCAC to strike October 5th

Members of UCAC (Undeb Cenedlaethol Athrawon Cymru, "National Union of Teachers of Wales") have overwhelmingly voted to strike in defence of teachers' pensions, the Welsh-language teaching union announced today.

September 11th, 2001

On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I was an undergraduate just beginning my third year of physics at George Washington University in Washington, DC. I had to get up for a lecture. My alarm went off and, instead of hearing music, the deejay was giving a news report, clearly shaken.

"The World Trade Center is gone."

More MLK on riots

This is starting to seriously bug me. Ever since the riot in Tottenham, many people who should know better have been circulating a "quote" from Martin Luther King Jr. that reads thus:

When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.

The first sentence of this is not a Martin Luther King quote.

Martin Luther King on riots

Here's Martin Luther King's quotation on riots, in its context:

Kicked out of Cardiff Council

Earlier today, July 21st, I attended a meeting of Cardiff Council as a member of the general public, but was ejected, in violation of the most fundamental claims of democracy on the Council's part, and despite having caused no disruption to the Council's proceedings and complying with every reasonable rule of the Council to the best of my ability.

Cymdeithas activists sentenced

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) activists Jamie Bevan and Heledd Williams have been fined for a direct action in protest against cuts to Welsh-language television statement S4/C. Jamie has also been sentenced to house arrest for 28 days but says he will defy the court's sentence.

Why not the Greens?

Matty Townsend, one of the Green Party candidates for South Wales Central, has asked me if I'll be using my 2nd vote to support the Greens in their push to get an AM in Wales and "fight the cuts". Here's why not.

The AV referendum in context

Excerpted from a longer piece being prepared for the Socialist Party's 2011 conference

The AV referendum is not going to be the question that determines whether Britain progresses to socialism or slides to barbarism; it will probably not even be a question whose outcome threatens the Coalition. In discussing how socialists should vote on AV we must remember that the mere fact of the referendum's proposal points to deep shifts within the British state.

Olympic Gold and Welsh Rust

The media revealed yesterday that the first event of the 2012 London Olympic Games will take place in Cardiff on July 25.

Some in Cardiff see the Olympics as wholly good. The games, they say, will bring jobs, investment and publicity to a region lacking in all three. Unfortunately, the record of previous Olympics speaks for itself.

South Wales Police can pick the other side

So now the jackboot is on the other foot. We hear recently that 1600 police officers may be cut in South Wales, including 688 in South Wales Police alone.

Clear red water

Freezing temperatures across the United Kingdom have put water companies across the devolved areas of the United Kingdom to the test. The chill and thaw has burst pipes, leaving tens of thousands of people without water for over a week. In responding to the crisis, privately-owned Welsh Water Dŵr Cymru and privately-controlled NI Water have come up short compared to its publicly-owned, democratically-controlled counterpart in Scotland.

In the news again...

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. The campaign against the Cardiff incinerator is going well but it takes up a lot of time I'd otherwise spend blogging.

One non-incinerator item of note. At their June conference, the University and College Union, of which I'm a member, voted solidly to ballot on strike action if no better offer on pay & jobs was forthcoming from the employers.

Ed Miliband: not the trade unions' choice

A refresher, since I didn't understand it myself until recently: the Labour Party is a federal organisation, composed of affiliated trade unions, various think-tanks and talking shops like the Fabian Society, a few special interest groups like Labour Students, and the Parliamentary Labour Party, each of which gets to vote in the Labour leadership election with various weightings and privileges. The ballot is done by ranked preferences. Having seen the results broken down by affiliated organisation from the Labour leadership election, I decided to pull them apart a bit and see what I could learn about what the trade union voice was actually saying. I discovered one thing:

When trade unionist voters in the Labour leadership election were enthusiastic at all, they were enthusiastic for Diane Abbott — not for Ed Miliband and not for anybody else.

Better than God's law

When the Ummah of Muhammad claim that democracy should be replaced, the attraction of the position to its members is clear: what we call democracy in Britain fails minority groups now just as it has failed anyone but its owners throughout history. Bourgeois democracy is always going to be a system for the ruling faction; I've proposed as a principle before that the solution to a problem of democracy is never less democracy and I will apply it here. What is a call for theocracy? It is a call for the replacement of one bourgeois rule with another; this is easy for all of us to reject. The pursuit of a more complete democracy, a consensual, workers' democracy, is the only progressive path.

Ummah of Muhammad demonstrate in Cardiff

Saturday 10 July, a group calling themselves the Ummah of Muhammad held a demonstration in Cardiff. This is probably just about the only real, first-hand coverage they'll get.

In the lead-up to the demonstration, the Ummah of Muhammad (UoM) put out press releases in which they claimed to be protesting only against bans on the veil and construction of minarets, releases which the BBC ate up and regurgitated without critical examination. The press releases are a mask: Ummah of Muhammad are the radical theocrats the English Defence League pretend all Muslims are.

In the news II

I have an article about college mergers on the Socialist Party Wales page.

I've also got my first ever guest blog for Wales Online, as part of their series on visions for Cardiff in 2020: Cardiff in 2020: Cardiff city for Cardiff’s workers, not the other way around.

Finally my first post at Radical Wales is up, on the subject of the police and the EDL demo: South Wales Police pick a side.

Enjoy!

Changing the wrong system I: A vote for AV is a vote against FPTP!

Now that the government has put the alternative-vote (AV) referendum forward, it seems to be time for anyone and everyone, having had well sufficient time to consider the question, to start picking sides. On the democratic left there are basically two camps:

1) Vote yes for AV; it's not real proportional representation but it's what's on offer and it's progressive.
2) Don't vote; the gains from AV are outweighed by the implied legitimisation of an illegitimate system.

The Green Left being about the farthest right a group can be and still pronounce the "left" in their name without giggling, one is accustomed to a certain amount of ashamed shuffling as the GL try to distance themselves from us dangerous elements on the left who believe in, for example, socialism. Nonetheless one is surprised this week to learn that Derek Wall, Green Party exec, member of the GL steering committee and former Male Speaker of the Greens, has invented a third camp, or at least, borrowed it from the Tories:

3)Vote no to AV; it's better than first past the post.

About me

At work I'm a PhD candidate in theoretical astrophysics at Cardiff University. As an undergraduate I studied general physics with a minor in mathematics and I think — hope — that this background in the sciences informs the political work I do.

I've always been on the left ideologically, self-identifying as a lowercase-s socialist, ever since I was quite young (I read the Communist Manifesto when I was ten), but I only radicalized around early 2009. I did so out of exasperation: I was an Obama voter, I sensed the mood in the US was not just for "change" but for dramatic reform of the American economy toward something more structurally fair, and I was hugely disappointed that Obama, like every other government in the developed world, whether they called themselves Democrat or Labour or Socialist or Christian Democratic or whatever, did the exact same thing: give huge amounts of money to the banking sector but do nothing to bring those industries under the control of the public. At this point, I finally became convinced that only revolutionary change, rather than reform, could fix the deep problems of society.

I joined the Socialist Party on May 1st, 2009. I chose the SP out of apprecation for its complete picture of activism: not merely handing out leaflets and going on demonstrations but taking part in campaigns top to bottom, bringing together the trade union movement with a broader layer of activists from colleges, universities and the general public. I sit on the party's Wales Committee and the executive of the Cardiff-East branch.

I'm currently the Mature Students Officer at Cardiff University Students' Union until August 2010. I'm also active in my branch of the University and College Union and attended UCU Congress 2010 as a delegate from Cardiff University.

I was born in France to American parents and moved to Wales in September 2005 after living in Washington, DC from 1997. I currently live in Cathays, Cardiff.

If this is the question, the answer is yes

The Wales Office has sent a draft power referendum to the Electoral Commission:

"At present, the National Assembly for Wales (the Assembly) has powers to make laws for Wales on some subjects within devolved areas. Devolved areas include health, education, social services, local government and environment. The Assembly can gain further powers to make laws in devolved areas with the agreement of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Parliament) on a subject by subject basis.

If most people vote Yes in this referendum, the Assembly will gain powers to pass laws on all subjects in the devolved areas. If most people vote No, then the present arrangements, which transfer that law-making power bit by bit, with the agreement of Parliament each time, will continue.

Do you agree that the Assembly should now have powers to pass laws on all subjects in the devolved areas without needing the agreement of Parliament first?"

Seven unions, one message: fight the cuts!

Education institutions across Britain took part in a multi-union Day of Action on the 21st, with lecturers and support staff rallying together in anticipation of savage ConDem cuts and education bosses' callous "economizing". UCU, Unite, Unison, GMB, EIS, ATL and students' union NUS all signed on to the campaign.