Taking Out The Trash

Blacklisting - it was for health and safety reasons

Update: Saturday November 21

The Guardian runs my feature today updating the various aspects of the blacklisting story; from the court cases to the pending legislation and the continued drip of information that the files are releasing.

Seventeen months after Guardian Work exposed blacklisting in the construction industry, new laws outlawing the practice are set to come into force, and next week 23 of its alleged victims will start their court cases.

But for electricians such as Colin Trousdale it doesn't mean the scandal is over....

Read on

Northern Voices follows-up today's story and Panopticon has a considered take on the latest developments. I'm also intrigued by its suggestion here of a particular project in this area.

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Yesterday building firm Skanska, one of those which subscribed to a secret intelligence-gathering company, today revealed the results of its internal investigation into the matter.

People Management Magazine Online reports that:

Building firm Skanska used an illegal blacklist of construction workers to vet employees for a history of violence and drug or alcohol abuse, an internal investigation has revealed.

Harvey Francis, executive vice-president for HR, told PM that it had subscribed to the list, which contained confidential details of 3,213 construction workers, “to ensure the safety of people working on our sites” – not to blacklist people on the grounds of trade union membership as reported in the press.

One person a week dies on a construction site in the UK so it is a laudable aim to put health and safety front and centre. However, many of the blacklisted construction workers I have spoken to (and whose files I have seen) have ended up on the system because they raised health and safety issues. A campaign group representing families bereaved because of deaths in the construction industry has spoken out specifically about this.

The report says that the Skanska investigation has led to:

"all white-collar staff were given training sessions on a new company code of conduct, which included guidance on employee referencing. A new position of data protection officer was created, and all of the 80-strong HR team were retrained on a new data protection policy – with yearly refresher courses planned."

It's pretty clear from what Francis says that there was a system-wide failure in the HR department but, the report says, no-one has been sacked. So in one case we have mistakes that have been proved and no-one gets the chop. On the other hand, false or irrelevant allegations are made and construction workers industry-wide are sacked. Somehow it does not seem that people are being treated equally.

The human relations departments in construction firms have been pretty succesful in avoiding the spotlight in this scandal. It is to Francis's and Skanksa's credit that they have been upfront about their investigation.

Concerns about how the HR industry has acted have been raised - it would be useful to know what steps other companies have taken to overhaul their HR departments in the manner Skanska has.

End of the Line

This coming Tuesday (November 24) environmental group ecolerne is showing End of the Line.

Released this summer, this documentary is a powerful indictment of modern fishing practices and has proved a global hit. It is timely considering reports today that skate could be the first fish driven to extinction through commercial fishing.

The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Bernard Purrier from Chippenham’s Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

The film starts at 8pm and takes place in the function room of the Fox & Hounds pub in Colerne. It's free (donations welcome) and open to all.

Ideas above your station

Update Nov 20: Roger Helmer has blogged about the conference though I haven't seen any organiser answer the specific criticisms laid out below by various commentators.

Update Nov 18: Left Foot Forward has also now blogged  about this conference picking up on some different points as has Sunny Hundal over at Liberal Conspiracy. Over at the Political Scrapbook there is some background on conference speaker Fred Singer who has form for fronting for vested interests - in his case the tobacco industry. A glance at organiser Roger Helmer's blog find this post supporting the tobacco industry in the face of restrictions proposed by the World Health Organisation.

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I got an invite from Roger Helmer MEP to attend a conference tomorrow (November 18) in Brussels called Have Humans Changed the Climate - facts and consequences.

Roger is a long-standing critic of anything which supports the idea that humans are responsible for catastrophic climate change. He has even used EU funding to put out a DVD promoting these views. I assume this conference was similarly EU-funded.

Well, he's consistent and open about his views and, generously, you could argue he's merely providing a platform for a debate rather than imposing his own ideas.

I was more interested in the last two speakers at tomorrow's conference: a couple of shills who will look at the media and climate change.

First up is Dr Benny Peiser from Liverpool John Moores University on Media Bias, Climate Alarmism and the Rise of the New Media.

Dr Peiser has bounced around a few topics, including near-Earth asteroids, but since climate change denial pays so well keeps his profile high has proved so stimulating he has written extensively on the issue. The fact he has no expertise in this area is no bar to his standing, obviously. Since he has no media expertise it seems he is doubly unqualified to give any presentation.

But that's just me.

(Incidentally, guess which School Benny is in at John Moores. Geology? Chemistry? Physics? Try, School of Sport and Exercise Sciences).

Then there is the charmless James Delingpole - a Telegraph columnist who thinks it is awfully dangerous to write sarcastic columns about the usual litany of right-wing bogeymen such as the socialist EU superstate (yawn).

Delingpole twittered as he was on his way to the conference: "Free champagne on train; free deluxe hotel room; basement swimming pool; free porn probably. Thank you, Eurotaxpayer."

Humourless lefty that I am I just can't shake the impression he's a pampered hypocrite rather than a cutting-edge commentator.

Strangely, on the speaker programme I was sent he's listed as Dr James Delingpole. Yet I can find no indication anywhere that he has earnt such a title and, if so, whether it was for sciences. It could not possibly be that the title was added to make him look more credible than he actually is?

At least he has one thing over Benny and that is works in the area he is talking about. But then Benny has got a doctorate, even if it was in social anthropology. Well, you pays your money - you takes your choice.

A sinister conspiracy

This morning it was the usual struggle to write a cheque because of the design of the chequebook; then I partially sliced my hand because the peeler was similarly ill-equipped.

For the left-handed - life is just that little bit more difficult. I mean, President Obama has got some mighty forces ranged against him and he's also cackhanded. (Do you reckon they try and not stage photoshoots where he has to sign anything?)

Then I read this review of Juliet Nicolson's new book about life after World War One and realised how institutional this prejudice is. Nicolson talks about the compensation offered to injured veterans.

"The loss of a full right arm from the shoulder downwards was worth sixteen shillings a week. Fourteen shillings were awarded if the arm was missing from below the shoulder but above the elbow, and then the rate dropped to eleven shillings and sixpence for limbs missing from below the elbow." The left arm merited a shilling less all round.

At least reporters' notebooks are designed to be operated by people both sinister and dexterous.

Politics and paranoia book review

Tribune magazine has just published my review of Politics and Paranoia by Lobster magazine editor Robin Ramsay. It was written before I'd had a chance to look at Christopher Andrew's history of MI5. This book could almost be read as companion piece to that official history.

(Incidentally, Lobster's first online only edition comes out next month and has an extensive article by me on the construction industry blacklisting scandal.)

Just because you're paranoid. . .

The Labour Party, whether in government or opposition, seems to have a pathological inability to deal with the intelligence services.

Either this is through fear about being bitten or a sense that the chaps really do know best and Labour should stick to stuff like the NHS.

Politics and Paranoia is a collection of talks that Robin Ramsay, editor of the parapolitical magazine Lobster, has given around the country for the last 20 years.

Ramsay abides by the First Law of American politics after Watergate: “No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is really doing is worse than you could possibly imagine.”

In an engaging and lucid style these talks cover topics such as the rise of New Labour, the complex network of plots that targeted Wilson and Heath, the British American Project for the Successor Generation, mind control research, the War on Terror and several furious dissections of Labour’s subservience to the City.

You do get a fair amount of repetition as he cuts and pastes key sections and quotes for reuse. Ramsay is frank about what he does and does not know (by implication, we know even less) and he’s not edited the talks where he’s got things wrong, but acknowledged it in a footnote.

Of course any talk about conspiracy theories immediately gets ‘ordinary’ people rolling their eyes. Green inkers who think Roswell aliens on the grassy knoll assassinated Kennedy’s body double to protect the Queen’s cocaine empire.

Yet as Ramsay points out: “…even ignoring all the evidence of large scale political conspiracies, and organisations such as intelligence services which are conspiracies pure and simple, it is blindingly obvious, is it not, that political parties, for example, are intrinsically conspiratorial. Routine internal party politics is a network of interlocking cabals plotting to get their hands on this group, committee, caucus meeting, council, party, pressure group.”

Reading over some of these talks, where Spycatcher was still fresh and Colin Wallace had only just been released from prison, you realise there is an immense institutional will to forget.

A man who has evidence of dirty tricks by the intelligence services against Labour and Liberal politicians gets framed for manslaughter. And nothing happens.

Ramsay believes that on too many occasions the Labour Party did not show leadership that would have kept up the media pressure.

Thatcher taunts Kinnock after one of his staff spoke to Peter Wright’s lawyers and Kinnock dives for cover rather than ask the obvious question about how she knew. Once in power MI5 and MI6 continue to act with impunity.

Can you imagine a Labour MP making a maiden speech like Ken Livingstone’s where he aired the allegations of Wallace and Fred Holroyd and accused the sainted Airey Neave of being involved in dirty tricks?

In several of Ramsay’s talks he discusses the destabilising of New Zealand in the 1980s as it pursued policies not sanctioned by the US.

If Labour thinks that acquiescence to the secret state during its time in power will protect it in the future then this book shows that to be a naive at best.

ENDS

Now RMT members found on blacklist files

Tribune magazine has posted up a news story from me about how RMT members have found they have blacklisting files. So far it was thought just construction workers in Ucatt and Unite were affected.

Members of a third trade union have been revealed as being victims of the infamous construction industry blacklist.

In February, officials of the Information Commissioner’s Office raided the Consulting Association in Droitwich. They discovered secret files on some 3,200 workers in the construction industry which had been maintained on behalf of building firms for vetting purposes.

Of the 238 files released so far, most have been on members of the UCATT and Unite unions – but now it turns out that some RMT members were blacklisted as well.

You can read the rest here.

I interverviewed Chomsky; but I think I got away with it

My first reaction on opening up the comment pages in the Guardian today was to think: "Oh good; look forward to reading that."

Then I thought: "Oh no; you're going to get creamed."

The Guardian carries an interview with noted linguist, political activist and media theorist Noam Chomsky who was giving a talk in London this week (a sell out, as always).

I think this is the first time the paper has carried an interview with Chomsky since a disasterous encounter back in 2005 which led to them having to apologise for misrepresenting his views.

Since then barely a day goes by without Medialens, the group which monitors bias in the liberal media, bringing this up as an example of how the Guardian et al are in league with the Illuminati. (Before they write in; that sentence was written in a style known as 'irony' or 'taking the piss' so don't bother factually analysing it.)

So I expected Seamus Milne's thoughtful piece to attract a blizzard of micro-anaylsis. Afterall, when George Monbiot called Blair a war criminal he got 'lensed' because he wasn't John Pilger and only Pilger gets to say that.

But, 12 hours after publication, all is quiet.

Surely Milne is merely adding another bar to our gilded cage by helping with the pretence that the Guardian carries dissenting opinion? (I note the Chomsky interview isn't puffed on the guardian's home page: censored again!)

Or maybe Chomsky's visit was a good chance to carry an interview with a man who is of interest to hundreds of thousands of people and who offers a different perspective on international affairs.

No, that is far too simplistic and rational an explanation.

What counts as easily available?

About a month ago I wrote on a government database aimed at naming and shaming those companies which refused to pay out industrial tribunal claims.

Unfortunately you had to know the name of either party involved to carry out a search and each seach costs you £8 and if you wanted bulk access (as credit reference agencies do) you would have to pay even more and there were restrictions on how the data could be used and, and, and.... basically this was a useless effort at naming and shaming.

So I put a Freedom of Information request in to the Ministry if Justice asking for a copy of the database.

Today I got a response (over the 20 working day limit but we'll let that pass).

My request was refused under section 21 which says that you don't have to give out the info if it is already easily accessible. Interestingly, Section 21 doesn't have a public interest defence.

I've asked for a review of their refusal arguing that the information isn't freely accessible.

There were, at the last count, 161 companies on the database. With a fee of £8 a search it would cost me £1,288 to discover all their details. This is more than the MoJ could reasonably be asked to spend complying with a FOI request.

The Information Commissioner has already ruled that, while charging for access does not in itself mean information is inaccessible, excessive fees do constitute a barrier. See this ruling which has gone to appeal and in particular paragraph 35 (thank you FOI News for this).

I would argue that exactly the same situation applies here where it would cost me an excessive amount to obtain the information requested and more than guidelines say the MoJ should spend complying with FOI requests.

Further, the database can only be search once you have a name of either party involved. Therefore access is only open to those with prior information and obtaining that would likely require extra cost. The average user cannot freely access this database, even if it was free, because they would have no information to input to start the search.

The database itself is so constructed to be inaccessible unless you can pay a large sum of money and have a name as a starting point. This set up and the refusal to release the information, I would suggest, frustrates a primary reason for why the database was established in the first place.

Well, we'll see how my appeal fares, but it is annoying at a very basic level that government data, collected and maintained on our behalf, isn't made more easily available. Anyhow I thought that justice must not only be done, but seen to be done.

It would take five minutes to copy that database and send me a spreadsheet and that would sort it out. Or am I being naive?

Transition book review

I'm a great fan of Iain M Banks and slightly less of a fan of Iain Banks. Either way; a new novel from the Scottish writer is enough to make me pop into a bookstore or update my Amazon wishlist.

Below is a review I have done for the magazine Tribune on Banks's new novel Transition. I think his sc-fi writing is great. The Culture series has been tremendous. I don't know what they put in the water up there but he is just one of several sci-fi writers from the region producing some excellent work at the moment. (Ken MacLeod and Charlie Stross come to mind)

Transition, though, is not of that calibre. It is more of a fantastical novel such as The Bridge but with a weakness of plot and, in particular, of character. It's not changed my opinion of Iain Banks. Still, if you've an interest in some of the ideas behind Transition then this might be a start.

The M in Iain Banks is pretty crucial.

Iain M Banks is the author who has carved a series of well-regarded sci-fi novels mostly set in the vaguely libertarian-socialist future society called the Culture. Banks-without-an-M writes fiction which actually gets made into TV programmes (The Crow Road) and attains cult status (The Wasp Factory).

Admittedly, my list of completed Banks novels is far better on the sci-fi side. However I’ve always felt that while quality there was solid, some of the ‘straight’ fiction came across as a little light. Dead Air and The Business both had their moments but primarily appeared to be a contractual obligation on behalf of the author.

Now we have a Banks book with an M and with what could reasonably called a sci-fi plot.

Transition is set on Earth. In fact it is set on every possible Earth. The conceit is the many worlds theory which suggests every time there is a fork in the road and you take one path rather than other, two divergent timelines are created. There are an infinite set of worlds where some might only differ in the motion of a single electron and others where life never managed to coalesce.

The characters in Transition are, mostly, those who can ‘flit’ between these different worlds through force of will and a helpful narcotic.

Those who flit form the Concern, a sort of uber conspiracy which goes about interfering in the destinies of these other worlds to make sure that the good guys succeed and the bad guys do not. The problem is that one person suspects the Concern has a much more selfish and deadly agenda.

Banks structures his book with a series of first person pieces from the half dozen or so principal characters. The fractured effect neatly mimics the sense of a universe reflected in a shattered mirror.

These solipsistic narratives also help show how difficult it is to understand the grand plan behind the Concern’s individual interventions.

The problem is that Banks hasn’t gone to an awful lot of trouble to make the majority of characters particularly appealing or memorable.

Several, Aidan, the drug-dealer-made-good in particular, are very two-dimensional. He spouts lines an EastEnders’ scriptwriter would balk at.

The plot kicks off briskly and then rapidly flattens out as Banks moves his characters around like so many chess pieces. It’s all rather flaccid, despite the ever increasing number of sex scenes. Then, in the last 60 pages, the pace really picks up and there is a terrific showdown.

I fear, though, that many readers will start Transition but not make it through to that finale - and I’m not sure the book deserves their dedication anyway.

ENDS

Saturday at the movies: Manufacturing Consent

All this debate about Newspeak in the 21st Century (see comments in post a bit below) and because I've been reading up recently on Bernays and Lippmann and watching a bit of Adam Curtis for my MA I thought I'd post a little morsel of Chomsk to (en)lighten your weekend.