Last week, local authorities across Scotland unveiled their budgets for the next year. The councils put on a united front of horrific cuts for all. Hopefully comrades from across the country can update us on what their council’s budget will mean for them – let’s have a little look at Glasgow first of all.

Glasgow City Council are making cuts of over £58 million. Thousands of jobs will be lost, refuse collections will be halved, and many vital services will be cut – but instead of taking responsibility for their actions, Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson took the mature approach of bursting into tears and saying a big boy and done it and ran away.

BEST. DEMO. EVER.

Glasgow has often been the site of Scotland’s biggest protests – tens of thousands marched against the Iraq war in 2003, and more recently there has been a great deal of anti-capitalist direct action against tax dodgers, and huge student protests against the cuts. The student movement in Glasgow has been super busy over the past few weeks, what with occupying their own social centre, as well as protesting the course, jobs and services cuts at their own schools, colleges and universities. So, unfortunately, the student movement was unable to provide leadership in protesting against the Glasgow City Council budget cuts. Thankfully though, Defend Glasgow Services (an umbrella group which aims to aims to unite the city’s trade unions, public services workers and community/voluntary groups to defend services) had organised a protest in George Square, which we mobilised youth and student activists for.

On approaching George Square, we were bemused to see no sign of a demo – only a few semi-fascistic nationalists with an enormous banner calling for an end to London Rule – but eventually, we found the anti-cuts protesters, hiding between the City Chambers and the Cenotaph – so few in number as to be completely unseen from the rest of George Square.

There’s no denial though that the trade unionists were happy to see us and have a bit more young blood at their demo, greeting us with calls of Alright lads, how you doing? (despite a third of us being women).

The demo consisted of a few different speakers from within the trade union movement. One speaker spoke on how the cuts would disproportionately affect women, whilst an older man engaged us in conversation about what youse guys, you boys need to be doing . Another  speaker vocalised on how the trade unions would keep fighting the cuts. They received gentle applause. There was a muted rendition of they say cut back, we say fight back. cut cut cut back, fight fight fight back – and the crowd dispersed.

After so months of exciting activism, the contingent of SSY and allies couldn’t help but be disappointed. Our city, the city that is already lauded as an prime example of poverty and ill health in Europe, let alone the UK, is about to fucked over even further. And this is the best we can do to protest? A few dozen middle aged people applauding each other politely in George Square? What happened to Red Clydeside?

Back when trade unions were cool...

As young socialist activists, we have seen with our own eyes the level of fetishisation there is towards the trade union movement. The organised socialists who snub youth and student-organised protests and direct actions will put dozens of hours of work in leafletting trade unionists, attending their half-arsed rallies and conferences, and generally trying to woo trade union members, in the assumption that the trade unions ARE the working class and are therefore the only hope for socialism.

Since the Tories came into power last year, there has been an influx of young politically aware people joining the Labour Party. Why? Just because the Labour Party are now in the opposition doesn’t change their right wing, neo-liberal, capitalist agenda… what’s going on?

All the socialist Labour Party members I’ve spoken to about this have only been able to find one excuse which makes the slightest bit of sense – trade unions.

In order to build socialism, they want to build the power of the working class. So far so good. But because of the mistaken assumption that the trade unions and the working class are one and the same, and the symbiotic relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions, they have concluded that not only is the Labour Party socialist, it is the only hope for socialism.

No.

In this day and age, let’s face it – trade union members are the privileged few. Most young people can only dream of having a job so stable that they have the opportunity to join a trade union. I have never been in a job where I’ve had the opportunity to join a union, nor have most of my peers. I knew someone who was in a long term temp job in a unionised workplace – when he asked the shop steward how he could join, he was turned away.

The working world has changed over recent years – temporary contracts, zero hour contracts and long trial periods with no rights (followed by dismissal cos you’re just “not right for the job”) are now the norm.

By pandering to trade unions and their members and bureaucrats, the organised left is wooing middle-class, middle-aged people with homes and cars – and ignoring the real oppressed working underclass. The call centre workers and burger flippers; the job seekers and young apprentices – the people who are really suffering, and the people who are really angry.

The revolution is going to come from below.

Porter being escorted away by Police

Well not exactly -- so far both the tyrannical Labour careerist and despotic leader of Egypt still cling to power, but at yesterday’s demo against cuts in EMA some students finally got close enough to their “leader” to tell them exactly what they think of him, leading him to flee the demo he was supposed to be speaking at under police protection. Your plane to Jeddah is waiting too Aaron!

Just to remind readers why Aaron Porter is a total dickhead, when student demonstrators occupied Millbank Aaron condemned their actions as being “despicable”, with no condemnation of police violence. He then flip flopped when it became clear that hundreds of thousands of students supported the occupation and (bar stupidity like throwing fire extinguishers) thought it was fantastic, and said that he and the NUS had been “spineless” on supporting the student movement against fees and cuts and he personally had “dithered”.

This conversion to radicalism didn’t last long -- Aaron Porter voted against a proposal for the NUS to back a second demonstration against cuts and fees, instead calling for a “candlelit vigil” to try and lobby MP’s. Aww bless. As if this wasn’t bad enough, leaked emails showed that Porter was calling on the Government to make massive cuts in grants -- £800 million over four years. This is alongside his public stance in favour of a graduate tax, which may not be as bad as tuition fees but still undermines the principles of free education based on academic merit, not your bank balance. It’s also a mad position for a union leader to take -- retreating from the principle of free education means you’ve conceded ground to the Tories you can’t retake.

Porter -- like all former NUS presidents bar one -- is a member of the Labour Party, and clearly views his role as president of NUS as being the first step on the Labour career ladder. Cuddly daytime politico Andrew Neil said that Porter sounded like “a future MP” when he was on his tv show -- a view that’s far from unlikely when you look at what exNUS presidents have gone on to do. Jack Straw, former foreign secretary was a former President of NUS as was racist liar Phil Woolas who was immigration minister.

Porter clearly doesn’t want to rock the boat too much and defend students interests in case he fucks up his chance of getting a cushy job in the shadow cabinet.  When Porter came to speak at yesterdays rally against fees, hundreds of pissed off students went to confront their President about his conduct, he bolted and went to the police to get them to escort him away from his angry and revolting subjects.  A fantastic piece o direct action against a sell out Labour hack, and lets hope it’s repeated any time Porter tries to posture against cuts until he resigns as NUS President and fucks off to become a researcher for a Labour backbencher.

Cheerio Porter

EDIT -- It’s been reported in the press that Porter was racially assaulted by protesters, that he was called a “fucking Jew”. If it did happen it’s contemptible and the folk who said that should be told to shut up or fuck off anti-cuts demos. A report from the Alliance for Workers Liberty who were at the demo said there was no evidence to suggest this happened, so either it’s a lie or it was just a couple o folk and not a large crowd of eejits chanting anti-semitic abuse.

Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.

So with the Coalition – remember, the ones that Ed’s official job is to oppose – embarking on the biggest offensive against the welfare state since its inception, surely the natural place to find him would be at the forefront of resistance to their austerity measures of cutbacks, job losses, wage freezes and VAT rises?

Alas, no. In fact, probably the only time you’ve seen Ed anywhere near the headlines since his election has been over a cabinet reshuffle last week, and his earth shattering decision last year to not attend any of the student protests. Not even the nice NUS candlelit vigils.

Last week, Ed came out and said that he opposed co-ordinated strike action to defeat the cuts. This is no great surprise, but a blunt display of how markedly to the right the Labour party are from even the mainstream union leadership, who at least are employing the rhetoric of industrial action, if not the action itself. As we reported last week, Miliband has also been pandering to the right-wing press over the mythical ‘Royal Wedding Strikes’, saying that he finds the idea “appalling” and “totally condemns it”.

On top of this, not-very-red Ed has “strongly implied” that, nevermind backing strike action, he isn’t even willing to march against the cuts. And we’re not talking about some semi-legal student kettle frenzy, the march in question is about official as demonstrations go: the one organised by the Trades Union Congress for Saturday 26 March in central London – the demo that the TUC leadership have eventually called about a year after everyone wanted them to. Instead, all Ed can say is this: “What we are not going to do under my leadership is go back to the heroic failures of the 1980s which set the party back… Industrial action is not the way you change governments. You do it through the ballot box.”

Well that’s us told. Sit tight for the next four years and then on 7 May 2015 we’ll elect a Labour government and everything will be fine. Or not, as the case may be. RMT leader Bob Crow is right when he says that we “don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next general election… Con-Dem attacks on jobs, services and standards of living are hitting us now”.

26 March will be a key date for the movement to beat the cuts and the coalition. Hundreds of thousands – maybe more – will march in London. Unions are mobilising members from across the country – a number of trains have already been booked to run from Scotland, and dozens of coaches will also be heading down.

Let’s be clear, marching in itself will not be enough to defeat the ConDem’s agenda. But it can be a springboard for the sort of action that can. The student movement which exploded off the back of November’s NUS demo is a good example of what a big demo can achieve, managing to spark action across the country and bringing the coalition to the verge of their first defeat, thinning their majority dramatically.

Regardless of the attitude that the officials and bureaucrats within the trade union movement, the NUS or, for that matter, Ed Miliband , think, a huge militant demo has the potential to give a confidence boost to millions of workers across the country, and kickstart momentum for industrial action.

Autonomous groups have already started building for mass resistance on the 26th. A mysterious website, purporting to be from the ‘armed wing of the Trades Union Congress’ have initiated a call-out for decentralised mass action in London on the day. They’ve also got a wee bit ahead of themselves and started calling for all power to the soviets, but we share the general sentiment. Last weekend’s ‘Network X’ conference, of anti-cuts activists from across the country, also supported the call-out for direct action on 26 March that goes beyond simply being herded from one park to another to listen to speeches by a few TU leaders.

The Labour party have had 10 months now in which to show which side they’re on. The party’s leadership have no interest in fighting the cuts, being careerists of the worst kind, who’d rather sit back quietly for the next few years and hope they get elected sometime in the future. The time to fightback is now, and hopefully March 26 can prove to be the beginning of the end for this government’s austerity programme.

Every now and again, the British tabloid press manages to excel itself with a story so bonkers, so artificial, and contrived it threatens to put the Daily Mash writing team out of business. Previous winners of this award go to “Radioactive Paedo on the run”, followed by “Asylum Seekers eat royal swans” and finally “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”, the (nonexistent) video game about Raoul Moat’s massacre in the midlands.

Recently SSY has noticed another candidate for this award – a story circulating the press that the trade union ASLEF is planning a strike on the day of the royal wedding, jeopardising the newlywed’s celebration. Even though it’s unlikely Kate and Prince William will be getting the tube on their special day, this story has managed to tick several boxes for Daily Mail readers – Trade Unions = evil, Royal Family = national treasures.

London’s Mayor Boris Johnson called for members of the public to bombard the union wi messages asking them to cancel their strike on the big day. New Labour leader “Red” Ed Miliband said he was “appalled” at the thought of a wedding day strike – so much for his “trade union paymasters”.

The reality behind the cleverly orchestrated anti-trade union and royalist spin was that ASLEF’s executive hadn’t even discussed the possibility of striking on the Royal Wedding. Given that the Wedding day is a national holiday it makes little sense for drivers to strike – there’s a lot less disruption than if they struck on a working day.

The smears that were directed against ASLEF were made for three reasons – the first was to divert public anger from the Tories capitulation to the bankers on the issue of their outrageous bonuses. Boris Johnson and David Cameron wrote in the Sun about how unions were holding the country to ransom – aren’t they getting unions confused with bankers?

The second reason was to justify a tightening of the UK’s already restrictive trade union laws. Thatcherite laws have made the UK the hardest place in the EU to be a trade unionist, but the CBI and the Tories think it’s not hard enough. They want to make strikes illegal unless over 50% of union members take part in the vote and vote to strike.

As it stands now, for a strike to be legal all it needs is a majority of members who vote – so you can have strikes where only 50% of the unions members vote, and of that 50% a majority are in favour of strike action. The bottom line is that when a trade union calls a strike it does so based on whether or not it thinks it will have enough support among the membership – if very few members take part in a ballot it’s not a good omen for a strike, but ultimately it should be up to the union if it wants to call a strike even if it’s members don’t seem enthusiastic about it.

If the Tories introduced the principle that a majority of the electorate have to vote in Westminster elections for MP’s to be considered legitimate there would be almost no MP’s elected. It’s the same con as the first devolution referendum in 1979 – a majority of those who voted did so in favour of setting up a Scottish Parliament, but their vote was ignored because the turnout wasn’t high enough.

The third reason the strikes have been slandered is one that there’s not been as much coverage of in the press – it’s because of the sickening idea that the Royals are somehow better than us, and everyone in the UK should join in celebration at how fantastic their lifestyle is, as if they’re some kind of impartial national ambassadors who only want what’s best for us.

When one guy wrote to his MP making the legitimate point about how much these benefit junkies are taking from the taxpayer for his wedding, his MP told him to “get a life” – when it comes to the Royals MP’s clearly just throw their artificial, sterile, pre-packaged nicey nicey responses out the window and just hit back wi rudeness and spite. Maybe it’s because the Royals themselves are basically MP’s on a massive scale – unaccountable wi an expenses cheque and second (and third and fourth) homes dotted all over the country.

expect lots more Royal tat like this

And like MP’s, the Royals are very reluctant to let the plebs see what they get up to – they’ve been granted special exemption from the freedom of information act, so we know even less about what they do wi our money. The Independent covered some of the things they didn’t want us to know,

*In 2004 the Queen asked ministers for a poverty handout to help heat her palaces but was rebuffed because they feared it would be a public relations disaster. Royal aides were told that the £60m worth of energy-saving grants were aimed at families on low incomes and if the money was given to Buckingham Palace instead of housing associations or hospitals it could lead to “adverse publicity” for the Queen and the government.

*A “financial memorandum” formalising the relationship between the sovereign and ministers set out tough terms on how the Queen can spend the £38.2m handed over by Parliament each year to pay for her staff and occupied palaces.

*The Queen requested more public money to pay for the upkeep of her crumbling palaces while allowing minor royals and courtiers to live in rent-free accommodation.

*As early as 2004 Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, had unsuccessfully put the case to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for a substantial increase in the £15m-a-year grant to maintain royal buildings.

*The Palace planned to go ahead with refurbishing and renting the apartment of Diana, Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace after it had lain empty since her death in 1997.

*A letter exchange revealed a tussle over who has control of £2.5m gained from the sale of Kensington Palace land. Ministers said it belonged to the state, while Buckingham Palace said it belonged to the Queen.

Whilst the rest of society is facing cuts, there’s no such demand placed on the monarchy – while they will face a cut in civil list payments for their upkeep, in return they will be funded from the Crown Estate, which is worth £6 billion. This will make Prince Charles the richest King in the history of the UK when he takes on the job.

The Royal Family are a bunch of overpaid parasites who only exist because their Crown Powers make it very handy for various British Governments to bypass parliament. Enough parts of society are tailored for their own private interests – ie Freedom of Information exemptions and the handover of the Crown Estates. Even though the story was a sham, trade unions shouldn’t be bullied or made to feel ashamed for discussing strike action on the Royal Wedding – we aren’t all in it together with the Tory Cabinet and we’re certainly not all in it together with the monarchy.

'Zombie marcher' Andy Bowden is capable of showing his opposition to cuts EVEN WHILE ASLEEP!

. . .at least on Saturday we did for a bit. While opposition to the cuts hasn’t got as cool in Scotland as it is in France yet, this weekend saw an important beginning for a mass movement to defeat the Tories and Lib Dems with an all-Scotland march organised by the Scottish Trade Unions Congress.

Over 20,000 people through the centre of Edinburgh the weekend after Gideon ‘George’ Osborne announced the government’s comprehensive plan for ruining your life. We were proud to take our place alongside all Scotland’s trade unions, as well as angry people facing cuts to services on which their whole lives depend.

Our materials for the day went down well, with socialist meerkats calling on marchers to Compare the Council Tax. With council tax set to become a big issue in the election campaign (the SNP want to continue their useless policy of freezing the level of it, Labour want it to go up, using the cuts as an excuse), the SSP’s policy of taxing the rich according to their income, so that most people pay less for local services but at the same time we raise an extra £1.6 billion to pay for them, is the only one that can deal with both cuts and poverty. Simples!

Welcome fool, you have come of your own free will to the appoined place. . .

Edinburgh also got completely plastered with our ‘Hey Tories, Gonnae no dae that’ stickers as well, which you can expect to see everywhere soon. Apart from these and some pretty homemade placards, perhaps one of our main political contributions was to popularise the chant, “Maggie Maggie Maggie, Die Die Die!” This brought a smile to the faces of everyone who was old enough to remember why it is all the forces of good in the Universe hate Thatcher.

Ending up in Princes Street gardens, the huge size of the crowd at the bandstand showed just how angry people are already, and the real grounds for a fightback there is. But when we all dispersed from the march, that wasn’t the end of the day of politics for SSY, not by a long shot, because we still had AN EFFIGY OF DAVID CAMERON TO DEAL WITH.

After some detailed tactical discussion in our political nerve centre Wetherspooons, it was ascertained that there were in fact some nearby Tory offices which would make the best place for the sacrificial victim to prove that we really are all in this together by burning for our amusement.

This being the posh heart of the centre of Edinburgh, we made our way past all the caviar and top hat shops to the bunker of the Tory occupation forces in Scotland, where Dave was to meet his ignominious end. Or so we thought -- but that was before a wormhole to the 1920s opened up across the street, and a very posh and disgruntled woman (with an amazing hat that made her look like a cockerel) popped out to put an end to the socialist ruffians daring to stand up against the fine gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Government.

YE SHALL BURN ME ONCE AGAIN?!?!

As the flames began to lick at Dave’s bin bag suit, she angrily demanded to know what we were doing, which surely was fairly obvious. She then intervened to bring the sacrifice to an end, but chose the method of blowing on the flame to put it out (we hate to break it to you, but that’s how you make flames get BIGGER). Realising this had failed, she then chose to KICK DAVE THROUGH THE RAILINGS into the front court of whoever is unlucky enough to occupy the premises below the Tory office. Assuming these are not just more Tories, then we can only apologise for the bizarre sight that must have greeted you of a half burned David Cameron on a stick, and assure you that we didn’t put it there!

More photos from the day:

Working class dogs hungry for a socialist message

. . . and he does!

Style and panache: decisive contributions of youth to the anti-cuts movement

Of course, Saturday’s march was only the beginning of the fightback against the Tory blitzkrieg, so keep checking back here for all the latest news about the resistance to the Tory occupation of Scotland.

A small band of heroes have set out on a quest to get back what they’re owed from a dragon who just wants to hoard their treasure all for himself.

Sounds like it could potentially make a good movie, but it emerged today the big story of the (maybe) upcoming films of The Hobbit isn’t the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves, but rather the epic quest of trade unionists to get what they’re owed from director. Actor’s unions from around the world have told their members to refuse to work on the movies, after the makers refused to agree to negotiating a contract that would guarantee minimum wages and working conditions.

Throwing a massive huff in response, Jackson has threatened to move the entire production from New Zealand to Mordor Eastern Europe, claiming it was full of Orcs who would be glad of the work.

“It’s incredibly easy to wave the flag on behalf of workers and target the rich studios. It’s not hard to generate an emotive response, nor is it hard to sway public opinion, since nobody seems to like the facts to get in the way of a good story in these situations,” Jackson said in a press release. “Behind the claims of exploiting actors who are cast in the ‘non-Union’ Hobbit production, and claims that various high-profile stars will refuse to take part in the films, there are clear agendas at work. As usual with these agendas, they are based on money and power.” He is reported to have added with a snarl “They’ll never take away my precious profits!”

Jackson's lies are fooling no one

“So why don’t they film most of it in America?…oh, right. ‘Cause we got unions here and you gotta pay the staff a livable wage.

Hey Mr Jackson! Skip Eastern Europe, they got enough d-bags already. Just move the production to Calcutta…..that’ll show everybody!

…..what an a-hole.”

YOU SHALL NOT PASS. . .THIS PICKET LINE!

When you check out just how fantastically wealthy Sir Peter has got off the back of Middle Earth, and how the multi millionaire spends his cash, his attempts to portray himself as the victim seem even more ridiculous. When he’s not sleeping on top of his treasure under Lonely Mountain, he’s indulging his passion for planes. He recently spent $50 million on a private jet to shuttle him across the Pacific, but his real love is (I shit you not) building from scratch replicas of World War 1 military aircraft and flying them around for fun. Which keeps him far too busy to speak to trade unionists.

Bosses groups in NZ have lined up to back Jackson, after he promised they would taste worker flesh. But the Fellowship of Trade Unionists are not deterred, and point to the fact that this is one of the few union disputes that can claim the support of both elves and wizards, with cast members Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving in support. The battle for Middle Earth is over. The Battle for Union Rights is about to begin.

Michael O’Leary is the head of Ryanair, one of the richest men in Ireland, and loves nothing more than seeing his own name in the papers. The main job he does for his company is making ridiculous public statements about what cheapskates Ryanair are, like that they might start charging you to use the toilet in flight, or that they’ll have a “fat tax” for larger passengers.

The reason he does this is to make everyone who reads his wacky ideas think “Fucking hell, Ryanair are cheapskate bastards.” Although maybe this will mean you hate him and his company, you will associate it in your mind with cheapness, and check their site first when you’re going away. His whole public persona is built around basically saying to people “I am a total dick, and YOU FUCKING LOVE IT.” He calls it his “dog and pony show.”

It isn’t just an act though. He actually is a knobhead. Although he likes to paint himself as some kind of champion of the common man, but he attended Clongowes public school, described as “the Eton of Ireland.” He’s tried to completely ban trade unions from representing Ryanair staff -- the Irish union Impact say they have 270 outstanding cases of victimising and bullying. Staff have to pay for their own uniforms, training and meals, and office staff have to supply their own pens and are banned from charging their phones at work. He wants total deregulation of the airline industry, meaning your safety at 40,000 feet is in the hands of total free market gangsters -- he described the British Airports Authority as “overcharging rapists.”

It’s not just staff he bullies as well -- in 2002 a woman who won free flights for life as Ryanair’s millionth customer was awarded €67,500 damages after a judge found she’d been abused and bullied when she tried to complain that she’d started being charged again.

On top of all this he’s also a climate change denier, a position that makes quite a lot of sense for the head of a rapidly expanding airline. “Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit,” he said. Scientists argue there is global warming because they wouldn’t get half of the funding they get now if it turns out to be completely bogus. It’s horsehit.” Yes Michael, it makes total sense for scientists to make up something that runs counter to the interests of almost everyone with money, and who would have a vested interest in influencing research. Scientists give factual scientific opinions, not ones tailored to suit an agenda like you do.

In 2004 he bought a taxi license for his private Mercedes so he could drive it through Dublin bus lanes. As he put it to one interviewer: “I don’t give a shite if nobody likes me.”

His latest brainwave really takes the biscuit though. Last week he went on record saying Ryanair might get rid of co-pilots. Instead he said, if anything happens to the pilot a member of cabin crew can take over because “computers do most of the flying now.”

This may be a step too far for Ryanair passengers. The idea of sitting in a giant metal box a couple of miles in a sky that’s being controlled someone who’s training mainly covers flogging smokeless cigarettes and scratch cards. But Michael tried to re-assure us with the claim “”In 25 years with over about 10m flights, we’ve had one pilot who suffered a heart attack in flight and he landed the plane.”

Not Hogwarts, but Clongowes, the incredibly posh public school where O'Leary went

Which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be TOTAL BOLLOCKS. In a response letter to the Financial Times, Capt. Evan Cullen, President of the Irish Airline Pilot’s Association, spoke up on behalf of the pilot in question’s family, who were quite upset by O’Leary’s claims. The reason they were upset is because the guy in question did actually die. He didn’t get proper help from the cabin crew quickly enough because Ryanair hadn’t trained them in what to do if the pilot was incapacitated (I bet they’ll train them to LAND A PLANE th0ugh.) When doctors finally made it to the cockpit they declared the pilot clinically dead. They managed to revive him after “strenuous effort” but he later died. It may shock you to learn this guy did not land the plane, on account of being dead.

More importantly, what the incident in question does illustrate is the absolute necessity of co-pilots. Although the pilot was clinically dead, the plane landed safely because it had a co-pilot who was able to take over. There is a reason that when you go up in the sky you have a back-up in case anything goes wrong with the main person keeping you all from crashing into the ground.

As Capt. Cullen put it, in dead pan style, “That he [O'Leary] is prepared to make such statements while, apparently, not being fully briefed on these important safety matters is entirely consistent with Ryanair’s ‘innovative’ approach to staff relations, safety, pilot fatigue and related matters.”

But in an even better response, a senior Ryanair pilot came up with another suggestion to help the company save money. Capt. Morgan Fischer, who’s head of pilot training for the company, wrote:

“I would propose that Ryanair replace the chief executive with a probationary cabin crew member currently earning about €13,200 (£11,000) net a year. Ryanair would benefit by saving millions of euros in salary, benefits and stock options. Further, there will be no need to petition either Boeing or governmental aviation regulators for approval to replace the CEO with a cabin crew member; as such approval would not be required.”

We think this is a great idea, although we think that even then cabin crew/CEOs could be perhaps at least be paid a living wage. We’d much rather they were doing his job, which essentially involves being an arse in public on a regular basis, than flying planes. Straight off the bat this would save €241,000 in his salary, not to mention all the other money he rakes in from the company. It’s reckoned that he’s worth about €300 million, but nobody is sure. As he put it himself: “Money used to be my motivation. You always want to make the first million. Then you get to £10m and you think about £100m. But somewhere in the middle -- do not ask me where -- you stop worrying about money.” What a knob.

We doubt his cabin crew, existing on about £11,000 a year, have stopped worrying about money. Although we’ve been slagging the idea of cabin crew being made into pilots, that doesn’t mean we should disrespect the vital job they do, protecting people’s safety and making sure everything is ok in the body of the plane. The fact that on a Ryanair flight the main thing they have to do is sell stuff to you is an indictment of the company, not them, and they deserve Michael O’Leary’s millions much more than he ever will.

The Others are shocked by the consequences of Michael O’Leary’s penny pinching.

Cool masks: ETA members on video. They don't wear balaclavas like the Zapatistas because that's what the cops wear in the Basque Country

Last weekend, the Basque armed group Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna, which has fought an armed struggle for Basque freedom for decades, released a video declaring that several months ago they decided to stop armed actions, and announced a ceasefire.

In their statement, ETA said:

“In recent times, the Basque country has been at an important crossroads. The political struggle has opened up new conditions . . . The time has come to build a democratic framework for the Basque country respecting the wishes of the majority of the Basque people . . . The Spanish state is aware that the Basque country is at a crossroads. That the Basque country can now take the road of independence. They want to create conditions in which everything is blocked, to avoid political dialogue and to drown out the aspirations of the people . . . Basque activists and Basque citizens need to respond to this responsibly and urgently.

It is time to take responsibility and take firm measures . . . in the articulation of the independence project, in the process of creating democratic conditions, to respond to repression and the firm defence of civil and political liberties. Political change is possible. But there is no shortcut along the way.”

The road to freedom must be walked a step at a time, perhaps flexibly, but the effort and struggle towards this goal is necessary.

ETA’s decision is part of a wider re-alignment amongst the Basque pro-independence left, a process which I was able to witness during my visit there earlier this year. The mass movement of the left is trying to build maximum unity among the different forces demanding Basque independence, in order to force the Spanish government back the negotiating table from a position of strength. At a major rally I attended while I was there to mark this process, a declaration was signed that committed the participants to “exclusively peaceful and political means” to achieving change.

As one Basque activist put it to me: “We always understood we could not achieve independence and socialism through armed struggle, it was always defensive to protect our people and community from the attacks of the Spanish state. We always knew that mass struggle was the way to achieve our aims, and now we are entering a new phase of that struggle.”

The process of agreeing the new peaceful mass strategy has involved thousands of activists from the youth, trade unions, women’s movement, ecological movements and more.

The pro-independence left responded warmly to the announcement, saying in a statement:

“The Abertzale [pro-independence] Left considers that the public statement done by ETA is a contribution of unquestionable value to the establishment of peace and the consolidation of a democratic process. Therefore, we appeal to all political, trade union and social agents, to the Governments of Madrid and Paris and to the international community, to respond constructively to the desire of the majority of the Basque society.”

Predictably enough, the Spanish government has attempted to dismiss the historic announcement. The pro-independence left has for years been seeking a negotiated way to end the political in the Basque Country, but the Spanish government is only interested in crushing them. Basque political parties are banned, as is the youth organisation, newspapers are shut down, and over 800 political prisoners are held far from their families and subjected to torture by a supposedly “democratic” government. When released they are often subjected to incredibly harsh bail conditions that ban people from taking part in any kind of political activity on pain of return to prison.

Spot the difference: Mr Bean could do a better job than lookalike PM Zapatero

The Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, bizarrely said he was “disappointed” by the ceasefire announcement, adding that “statements are worth nothing, only decisions matter.” Presumably he has missed the fact that ETA has carried out no armed actions while the pro-independence left has been discussing and implementing its new strategy. Meanwhile his own government continues the brutal repression of anyone from the Basque Country who dares to stand up to them. His “disappointment” perhaps stems from the fact that ETA’s ceasefire will make it harder for them to brand innocent activists who have never used a weapon in their lives as “terrorists” and lock them up in brutal conditions.

An example of the kind of mass struggles that are taking place in the Basque Country is the demonstration that took place yesterday in the historic Basque capital of Iruñea as part of an international day of action around the capitalist crisis. The Basque trade union federation LAB, which is the biggest representative of organised workers in the Basque Country and fights for workers’ rights, independence and socialism, organised a mass demonstration outside the parliament. Then several activists went on to occupy a branch of the Santander bank. They wanted to highlight how the attacks facing Basque workers (much the same as the ones we face in Scotland at the hands of the ConDem government) were a result of the crisis caused by the banks. Check out the video below of the action:

The occupation went on for two hours, and led to seven activists being arrested, who were later released.

Demonstrating against the capitalist crisis in Iruñea

we can haz no paycut plz

The placards, headlines and banners have been screaming about cuts, austerity measures and swingeing job cuts for what seems like ages now. We’ve all known that there’s a pending apocalypse coming our way – insert comparison about it being the worst attack on the working class since Thatcher/WWII/THE BEGINNING OF TIME  here – for ages, but when it actually comes to visualising it, it can be pretty difficult. There’s so many different facts, figures and quotes being thrown around all over the place, that it can be hard to know what’s mere speculation, what could be a government red herring, and what’s actually going on – so much so, that ‘the cuts’ can actually seem pretty remote and distant at the moment, something we can all hope surely wont be as bad as everyone’s saying it will be, or at least wont affect me personally, right?

Not so any longer for Scotland’s 150,000 council workers, who’ve just been hit with a non-negotiable “deal” by COSLA (consortium of stupid stupid stupid local authorities), the organisation that represents all of Scotland’s councils together, which effectively amounts to three years of pay cuts.

Initially, trade unions had approached COSLA asking for a 3% rise this year.  In real terms, this isn’t a pay rise at all – it’s just keeping up with inflation, currently hovering at just over 3%. But full of rhetoric about “tightening their belts” and the need for “public sector pay restraint”, the local authorities got back and offered  a 1% rise this year, a pay freeze in 2011, and an 0.5% rise in 2012. The unions put this to their members and it was quite rightly rejected, and with this mandate, they returned to the negotiating table hoping for a better offer.

Alas, COSLA had a better idea, so on Friday they tore up their old offer, and came up with a new one that’s even crappier. And what’s worse is that for the first time ever they’ve made imposed the offer and refused any further negotiations. Local authority workers across Scotland – encompassing cleansing workers, social services, roads, libraries and everyone else except teachers – can now expect an 0.65% increase this year, and a pay freeze in 2011 and 2012. With inflation well above this and liable to rise, this offer effectively amounts to a significant cut in wages, which the ConDems’ VAT rise, coming into effect in February, will only add to.

Wage cuts don’t have to be inevitable though, despite the propaganda of the capitalist press and the government who insist that we’ve “all got to share” the burden of the er, massive bank bail-outs and global recession that we er, didn’t cause. It remains to be seen how much will there is within the local authority trade unions – the main three being Unison, Unite and the GMB – to take action against the cuts. Sources have told Leftfield that in the current climate with huge fears over job security in the public sector, there persists a reluctance among large sections of the workforce to take industrial action. This reluctance only plays into the hands of the bosses though, who can then impose any pay offer they want, as they just have, assured that they wont have to suffer any consequences through industrial action.

There’s an urgent need for a movement to grow to resist the cuts. Above and beyond this latest measure  to slash pay for thousands of low paid council workers across Scotland, the Westminster government spending review – revealed in October – will paint a fuller picture of the cuts to come. In an ideal situation, there’d be unofficial walkouts at council offices and depots across the country next week, and official action over the next few months. Whether we can summon more than a demo at the end of October will depend on the ability of activists within the union movement to convince the workforce that they can fight and win on this issue – and whatever they come after next, be it pensions, holiday entitlement or jobs!

By McMeg, additional writing by me, blogging fae Athens on today’s demonstrations protesting the Greek parliament’s vote to bring in destructive “austerity measures” in the wake of Greece’s near-financial collapse.

PAME demonstration of around 10,000 in central Athens

Athens is a city that is acquiring a reputation for itself. When a taxi driver asked where we were headed with our suitcases, our response prompted him to ask “Athens? Will you no get caught up in they riots out there?”. It would seem that the combination of constant reporting of Greece as overtaken by bomb-strewn madness and the main Scottish reference point when it comes to riots – the Poll Tax Riots – has given people a distorted view of what’s really going on here. The fact is, the IMF are being sold Greece under the table by the ‘Socialist’ government (Read: Greek version of the Labour Party), and their conditions for giving Greece money to bail out its failed banks is that the Greek government goes about systematically destroying any vestiges of a welfare state. It’s understandable why the people are angry. But they are expressing it in a way that is altogether more concise and class conscious than any pictures of anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police while stray dogs look on cooly can convey.

What we attended today was not a Poll Tax riot. No banks were burnt down, no statues were defaced. What we attended was an eye opening experience that allowed us to see two things:

1. The diversity and competence of the Left in Greece
2. The sheer extent of the unbalanced and jaundiced way in which the international press have reported this situation.

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