Keep the link between the Co-operative Group & the Co-operative Party

Last year Co-operative Group members sent a resounding message of support for continuing the historic relationship with the Co-operative Party, by passing Motion 10 at their AGM in May 2015. This was not just a vote in favour of the Co-operative Group continuing its subscription to the Party but also in favour of the Co-operative Group continuing to be actively engaged in making the case for a more co-operative Britain.

The case is just as compelling in 2016 as it was last year. 

The historic partnership between the Co-operative Party and the Co-operative Group is vital if the Group wants to be at the heart of demonstrating that co-operatives are a better way of doing business.

The co-operative movement has always been a powerful advocate for a society where wealth and power are more equally shared.

Given rising inequality, the failure of our economy to deliver fair rewards for the many not just the few, and the potential for the co-operative movement to play an even bigger role in our society and in our communities, it is vital that the movement continues to have a voice in the rooms where decisions are made – in Westminster, in Holyrood, in Cardiff Bay and in town halls up and down Britain.

So if you are a member of the Co-operative Group, vote in favour of the motion on political subscriptions again at the AGM on 21st May or in advance online.

http://www.keepit.coop/?recruiter_id=76947  ::  http://www.keepit.coop/decision

George Osborne's Budget of unfairness and failure

Did you follow the budget this week? What do you think of the Chancellor taking benefits from the poorest and least able in society whilst simultaneously raising the 40% tax threshold (up by by £1,100 – to £45,000 from April 2017) for higher income earners, and cutting Corporation Tax by 3% (from 20% to 17%) so big businesses pay even less? As Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn's Facebook page says, "George Osborne has chosen to cut £3,500 on average a year from people with disabilities while offering tax breaks for those at the very top."  Do you think that is a fair way to handle the country's finances?

How about the decision to take all schools out of local authority control and make them become academies? A scheme which has already seen the title deeds for schools transferred from local authority hands to private companies. It will also remove the rights of parents to be governors of the schools that their children attend, and will place the decision on when a teacher is ready for QTS (qualified teacher status) status in the hands of the school's head, rather than as now.  That might seem like a good idea until you get to the part where we are told in The Guardian that, "One consequence is that it will be easier for schools to hire experts, including scientists and historians who have not been through official teacher training, and prepare them for accreditation." So it opens the door to unqualified teachers in schools!

Also in The Guardian, 'Lucy Powell, the shadow schools minister, said there was “no evidence to suggest that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement”. She pointed out that the chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, had written to the secretary of state for education highlighting serious weaknesses in academy chains. “How the government can plough ahead with the wholesale academisation of all schools in light of his evidence beggars belief. We want to see robust accountability and oversight of all schools regardless of type,” she said.'

Meanwhile, Councillor Roy Perry, chairman of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, said, "only 15% of the largest academy chains perform above the national average in terms of pupil progress, compared with 44% of council-run schools." If forcing schools to become academies is designed to improve standards then it is doomed to failure, as the evidence already shows that they are not the answer!

So if these experienced people have such concerns, should we be accepting this change without worry or should we be demanding "a public inquiry and a referendum over turning all schools into academies"?  After all, it is our children and grandchildren who are going to be affected as the kids of the Government ministers all seem to go to private schools anyhow!

Ben Chu, Economics Editor at the Independent, wrote, "Taking all of Mr Osborne’s post-election tax and benefit measures together, the IFS on 17 March estimated that the incomes of the poorest 10 per cent of the population are set to fall by 7 per cent by the end of the parliament and the second poorest decile by 9 per cent. That equates to an annual loss of £1,300 and £1,600 respectively."

The IFS has produced a chart showing how serious the impact of the budget on poorer families:

It is quite clear that the rich will benefit, the poor will suffer. But it's not just the poor, it is everyone bar the very wealthiest who will lose out. This is no budget to help ordinary people is it? Even those middle income Tory voters who have loyally, if misguidedly, followed their leaders until now. Is it not time to call a halt to this sham of a Government's damage to our society? Time for all of us to stand together and say enough is enough. We are not prepared to see the richest in the land get richer, big businesses pay even less in taxes, whilst the rest of us have to tighten our belts and struggle on with an ever-decreasing income?  Time to stand up and say we will not allow those in need of help through disability or illness to be deprived of a reasonable standard of living. They are not benefit scroungers, they simply need our help due to circumstances quite often beyond their control.

These and much more have, however, been somewhat overshadowed by the idiocy of the Sugar Tax on soft drinks. Just soft drinks mind. You can have as much sugar as you like in biscuits, cakes, chocolate, puddings, etc... just not in soft drinks.  Like that is going to make any difference at all except in hitting people in the pocket and perhaps manufacturers switching to some of the disgusting artificial sweeteners with all the associated health issues they bring!

The measure of the civilisation of a society is measured by how that society treats its poorest, weakest and most vulnerable members. Based on that scale, this Government is one of the most uncivilised, wicked, bullying and despicable that this country has endured in a long time!

Now you have read this, why not watch Jeremy Corbyn's reaction to the Budget here?
https://donation.labour.org.uk/page/content/budget2016/

National Media Museum > Science Museum North & the loss of the RPS collection to London

I've been following a story in the Guardian about the appalling decision to move the Royal Photography Society’s world-renowned collection of more than 400,000 objects dating from 1827 to 2016 from its home (since 2003) at the National Media Museum in Bradford, to the already overstuffed Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The thinking behind this move defeats me, and I am not alone it seems, as local MPs Judith Cummins [Bradford South] and Imran Hussain [Bradford East] are both shocked and enraged by the move too. Meanwhile, Simon Cooke, the leader of the Conservatives on Bradford council, described the move as an “act of cultural rape on my city” and called for the deal to be reviewed.

As part of the move, the support for the international film festival has also been withdrawn, thus putting the city's UNESCO City of Film status at risk. Ms Cummins said, “The economic and cultural ramifications of abandoning the film festival could be enormous for Bradford. How can we seriously have an international film festival and honour our status as the world’s first Unesco City of Film without the National Media Museum at its centre? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

The V and A already holds a collection of 500,000 photographs, so the transfer of the RPS collection will almost double their holding. In the Guardian article dated 1st Feb. 2016, Martin Barnes, the senior curator of photographs at the V and A, said putting the two collections together made “a huge amount of sense”, a statement it is hard to argue with, but one can (and should) dispute the need for it all to be housed in London! Given the already crowded nature of London's big museums, and that they already attract huge tourist visits and footfalls, wouldn't it have been a better option to move the V and A collection north to Bradford and expand the National Media Museum into a larger world class museum? Bradford already has the reputation to back this up, it just needs the political will and the realisation that there is intelligent life beyond the M25 ring to follow it up.

The NMM's director, Jo Quinton-Tulloch, wrote a lengthy explanation about why she and the Trustees made the decision, that as a part of the Science Museum group there needed to be a bigger focus on all science, etc. This totally misses the point that the National Media Museum is not a general science museum! In fact it opened as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in 1983, which is why leaving the RPS collection there should be a no-brainer. Surely it would make far more sense to move other collections, many of which are probably gathering dust in the vaults of huge London museums, up to Bradford to enhance the National Media Museum, rather than migrate everything southward and change the NMM into a general science visitor centre?

It's also worth mentioning here that Halifax, not far away, is home to EUREKA! a marvellous independent science museum aimed at children, and that Manchester just over the Pennines has the Museum of Science and Industry, so it is not as if there is a lack of general science museum provision nearby. There is, however, nowhere else locally with the same brief and kudos as that of the National Media Museum.

Apparently there is a "crisis meeting" planned for next Wednesday (2 March) where the Trustees will discuss the ongoing campaign to prevent the downgrading of the NMM into an SM northern outpost and the loss of the RPS collection. If you would like to tell the Trustees what you think of the move, you still have a couple of days to do so, and of course you can sign the petition on 38 Degrees too.

I've done both of these, and a copy of my message to the Trustees is below. I wanted to show that this is something which matters not to the people of Bradford but to many more of us in the North, and that the London-centric focus for arts and culture is just plain wrong! If you agree, why not join me?

My letter to the Trustees of the National Media Museum:

Dear Science Museum press team and Media Museum Board of Trustees,

FAO Board of Trustees 

As an enthusiastic amateur photographer and film aficionado living in Cumbria I am writing to ask that you please halt plans to move the Royal Photography Society’s collection from Bradford to London, and reverse the decision to abandon the Bradford international film festival.

For me in Cumbria I can visit the collection in Bradford easily as it is less than 90 minutes drive (as opposed to 5+ hours to London), or it can be reached by train from here in half the time it would take to travel to London by train. Accessibility to such collections is just as important to us in the North as anywhere else, and indeed it could be argued, more so, as we have proportionately less of them!

It is also vital to keep the National Media Museum name to highlight this important area of science history.  Surely changing the NMM into Science Museum North will change its fundamental nature and demote it into a regional offshoot of the London Science Museum. The North already has an excellent Science Museum in Manchester but the NMM is unique in the North.

If the Trustees are serious about the value of such collections to the whole population not just Londoners, then allowing them to remain in Bradford is essential.  Moving the RPS collection to the V and A in London helps concentrate the UK’s cultural resources away from the North and sends the wrong message: that only the south of the country is worthy of important collections. 

Bradford has hosted the RPS collection, and the international film festival, for many years;  urgent steps should be taken to protect and enhance these in Bradford, not ship the collection off wholesale to London. Please reconsider. 

The National Media Museum in Bradford
The original uploader was Dupont Circle at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Cloudbound., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9780968