I'm surprised New Labour doesn't make all the mentally ill wear a luminous green star to enable the norms to identify who they're dealing with and to incentivise the wearers to get better and off benefits quicker.

2009 can be the year of bully power. It says in today's Guardian that Straw is bringing back the stocks and local communities are going to vote on how long people wearing pay-back jackets have to sit in them. Mentally ill people are going to be required to attend at job centres and be bullied back to health. Let's hear it for bully power.

Lewis, the UK, the USA and Israel seem to feel the need to get lots of practice imposing mini-Armageddons on people they feel able to push around without any obvious comeback. Indeed, the widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons would tend to act as a constraining factor on these three highly militarised countries more used to pursuing aggressive wars of choice than searching for realistic poitical and diplomatic pathways to peace and prosperity.

The way to peace in the Middle East and Europe is to close all American bases, including those in the UK, and to make sure that Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Gazzans have adequate and effective supplies of nuclear bombs and delivery systems.

If the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction worked well with a limited number of players during the Cold war, then i'm pretty sure it will work just as well, if not better, with a larger group of players sharing a common problem - the intransigence of Israel, the USA and the Uk.

Crikey SG,your envisaged destruction of the state of Israel would
surely feature Armageddon.Not so much a mortgaged future as an imploded one.We must pray that the finest intellects of world diplomacy are successful in finding a better solution.The only postman surviving otherwise would be Kevin Costner in a dreadful post apocalyptic movie.

'The Report has far more bad bits than good. For a start, it identifies the CWU as the villain of the piece. It’s all the CwU's fault, apparently, that industrial relations in Royal Mail are so bad and it’s down to them that they haven’t been able to modernise as quickly as necessary. Apparently,they are too good at persuading MP’s and Ministers ofthe union point of view! Nothing whatsoever to do with management putting off buying new machinery, despite having been given over £1 billion three years ago to do precisely that.The union's role in future, according to the Report, is to “accept the scale of the transformation required, and show that it can tackle the behaviour and internal processes which at present result in confrontation and obstruction.” In other words, roll over and die. All that management need to do is to “set out its vision for the company in a transparent way, the implications of transformation, the risks of failure, and the opportunities in diversification.” Translated into English, that means, “tell them what you’re going to do.”

Well Mandy and Co can think again,there is no need for this partial privatisation,Royal mail can have a great future as a publicly owned institution.
I look forward to Compass working with the CWU in order to defeat these proposals

"The emotional response to the issue of the future minority ownership of Royal Mail is bizzare."

When you think about it, the emotional response to Israeli Jews who continue to engorge themselves on the blood of Pakestinian chidren, but seem unable to ever feel they have consumed enough to be satisfied, is even more bizarre, in an even more bizarre kind of way. And the West's lack of emotional response to the war crimes comitted against the inhabitants of Gaza, the largest concentration camp in history, is even more bizarre. Would that the poor Palestineans had a friend as powerful and as ruthless and as merciful as the friend the South Ossetians have.

The sufferings of the Palestinians are the best argument I know for dumping the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and for leaving the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, including delivery systems, to the free market. Truly effective trickle down economics, as I've no doubt Gordon Brown understands them.

I have never assumed a two state solution to the problems of Palestine to be possible but I did assume a, possibly federal, bi-national state would provide the basis of a solution which could lead to peace

Can't see it now. And I can't see the continuance of a Jewish state in Palestine in any form beyond my lifetime. I can see the hurried establishment of some vast, hopefully temporary ghettos in Brooklyn and the Bronx and Fairfax and Alta, &c - not unlike Gaza - though, as the US repratriates its Jewish colonial diasporia and brings them back to establish a Jewish national home in the homeland and, hopefully, the US government will protect them from "shock and awe" bombing and invasion from their nearest neighbours, or passing moralists. Perhaps they'll even join the National Rifle Association.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sally G.

The emotional response to the issue of the future minority ownership of Royal Mail is bizzare. Where's the real fury for some of the ills of modern Britain: deepening poverty of aspiration; child neglect; the growing divide between state and independent education sectors; on-going shame of Iraq....
Truth is Labour's Alan Johnson ex CWU leader passed the postal services act which has accelerated the decline of Royal Mail - having stopped post office closures when Labour took office it has now closed more counters than any previous government. Having brought in hugely expensive new management and fallen for its spin about Royal Mail "turnaround" Labour is now looking to TNT to make the operational changes (the same TNT who lost the child allowance disc). Having oppossed Heseltine's 1990 privatisation proposal for Royal Mail Labour now is dusting it off the shelf.
What a mess/.......

Your mortgaged future documents Salfordgal are resting in a vault of the Cooperative Bank in Royston.They will be released to you when returning PM John Reid deems the time is appropriate.Oh ye of little faith!

"...the Royal Mail is an institution and it is wrong to sell it off"

Right, but doesn't the New Labour approach to modernisation, like at least one Turgenev hero, assume the necessity of virgin soil on which to grow the new competitive and rootless, neolaborious men and women of the future, standing on scorched earth, free of all the inhibiting institutions, customs and traditions of the past, like prudence, frugality, efficiency, effectiveness, honesty, decency, and pride in those few institutions which have, thus far, despite eleven years of "government" of a minority of a minority, by a minority of a minority, for a minority of a monority, not been completely overrun by a corrupt and incompetent privatising, PFIing and prioritising by irrelevent and counter-productive numerical targeting elite of New Labour malefactors, regardless of the costs to be paid, now and in the future, and despite the growing evidential base that politically and socially, as well as economically, we're going down the tube because of the decisions they have chosen to make? If so, don't you feel you're asking an awful lot of them, jj?

These guys have flushed themselves down the drain of history. The real problem is to ensure that the opportunity to mortgage the future of my generation with handouts to bankers and tax scams for the rich is limited, and for that we need a general election asap, other wise they'll just do a Bush for their own cronies as they're on the way out.

i think its a disgrace that they want to part privatise the royal mail, and lay off up to 50000 employees. the Royal Mail is an institution and it is wrong to sell it off. especially in this economic climate.

Ian does have a good point ~ the whole process of post office reform seems to reflect the totalitarian democracy Salfordgal
has noted elsewhere ~ the sense of a government orbiting above its
earthbound electorate and controlling it via diktat.
A modern labour government mark you!

Former CWU boss passed the 2000 Postal Services Act which created an independent postal services and begun the process of liberalising the letters' market (ahead of EU 2011/13). Charlie Whelan had it right in describing the PSA 2000 as "a dog's breakfast".
Truth is I can't see the socialist case for having a parcels delivery company in the public sector or a letters business in the public sector.

Mandelson's proposal is probably too little too late but is very similar to Heseltine's proposal in the early 1990S: keep Post Office Ltd in public sector; privatise letters (and parcels). Labour has botched its policy toward Royal Mail royally - just as the Tories did - and that's why another great British industry is floundering and falling into foreign ownership.

Frances
'Dugsie - every thing you say makes perfect sense but it doesn't solve the problem that Ian Copcutt posed. Where are you going to go and who are you going to complain to?'

It is a political matter. As I have said before, the New Labour project has two main strategic aims. One has been to turn the Labour Party away from social democracy towards neoliberalism. Its approach to the gradual destruction of the Post Office as a public service is informed by that strategy, as is its hostility towards the most vulnerable in society. This is not being done out of malice, as such, but out of a conviction that 'free enterprise', with a degree of mitigation,is the only way forward. The implications of this are manifold. The second aim is to make the Labour Party the major party of power in this country.

Recent events have badly damaged the credibility of capitalism world wide, particularly in its neoliberal form. This has come as no great surprise to a few of us here, but it does present a problem to the political parties of the so-called centre-right, including the 'Labour' government.Expediency has become the dominant mode of operation for New Labour in present circumstances.

Of course, there is little point in complaining to them about anything. It is necessary to organise against them and raise the cost of proceeding with what are, quite literally, reactionary policies.I believe that the Labour Representation Committee are already doing this and I hope that Compass will join them in this endeavour.

"SG Try Tony Blair. He's meant to be sorting out the Middle East!"

Yes, but it's a bit too much like pre-booking Caligula do the floral arrangements for a mass funeral for my taste.

Dugsie - every thing you say makes perfect sense but it doesn't solve the problem that Ian Copcutt posed. Where are you going to go and who are you going to complain to?

Where is Tony? On holiday somewhere? Has he noticed his peace mission seems to need him?

New Labour's plans to continue the creeping privatisation of the Post Office are a disgrace. This is an essential public service whose integrity needs to be fully restored. It is retrograde to cherry-pick the most profitable parts of the service for privatisation and, thereby, destroy the viability of the system.The entire privatisation agenda now needs to be put into reverse.

You would have thought Brown would have been seen standing in front of the gate , standing hands on hips head slightly turned wearing his cape and knickers with superman plainly seen. He would then say my side kick Robin looking into this, who of course is played by that other great leader Blair.

Even now we are hearing about the arrest of the Tory MP the use of spying of camera and sound recording to entrap him under the Terrorism laws told by Blair and Brown which would never be used for anything else but terrorism.

Laws, rules, and we had better watch out Brown next words will be, look we are in the shite, I know I'm the only one to stop this and save the world, we better not have an election. no more elections until the recession is over we do not really need it because the Tories agree with everything I do anyway

SG Try Tony Blair. He's meant to be sorting out the Middle East!
I agree with you. It's like Zimbabwe. We just stand and stare at the horror year after year after year. Every one is waiting for Obama and he's making depressingly familiar noises. There doesn't seem to be a way to deliver the solutions.

It's the same at the domestic local level. The new ESA is ignorant and ill thought out. It was designed to catch non ill fraudulent IB claimants and so far it is terrorising the mentally ill and making them function less well and achieve less. Who do you go to to complain? We've tried everyone. There doesn't seem to be a functioning democracy with ways of getting the government to listen.

Well, nowhere safely in London if the hysterical, highly politicised and unnecessarily violent reaction of the Metropolitan Police is anything to go by if today's BBC report about the protests at Israel's highly topical variant of celebrating the Nativity Festival by staging the Massacre of the Innocents by Blitzkrieg and for real is anything to go by:

"London protest over raids on Gaza

"Ten people have been arrested for public order offences after clashes at a protest near the Israeli embassy in London against air raids on Gaza.

"Police said up to 700 people joined the demonstration and nearby Kensington High Street was closed to traffic.

"The protesters resisted and threw placards when officers forcibly moved them back so that the road could be reopened.

"The UK government has urged an "immediate halt" to violence in Gaza.

"The protesters had gathered to wave placards, banners and flags bearing slogans such as "End the Siege in Gaza" and "Free Palestine".

"Among them was 68-year-old Gamal Hamed, from Hammersmith, west London, whose 23-year-old son lives in Gaza.

""Yesterday was the bloodiest day in my homeland's history," he said. "We will do what we can to make the world take notice."

"Some protesters were seen attempting to climb the gate towards the embassy and also throwing red liquid - to symbolise blood - towards the gate.

"The clashes began after a small group of protesters stormed a barrier that had been penning them in.

"Riot police were brought in to control the crowds and demonstrators were seen being handcuffed and taken away by officers as they tried to clear the street.

"Several protesters left the scene with bloodied faces, according to a reporter from the Press Association.

"The crowd chanted "shame on you" at officers as they were moved back from the embassy on Palace Green to Kensington High Street."

(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7802078.stm)

Where do I go to protest about this governments total stupidity to want to privatise the Royal Mail? I was not keen on the Iraq war but continued with my Labour party membership and support as a local activist but if they go ahead with this one I will assume they no longer want my support either in delivering leaflets or financial. Perhaps the money would be better spent on Amnesty International or some other group with some semblance of integrity.
Thanks for the opportunity to have rant!