Support the Ford Visteon Workers Occupation

Come to the factory anytime!
Especially around 12 noon

Morson Road EN3 4TN
near Ponders End train station, Enfield

The plant is 5min walk, cross the foot-bridge, walk down main road towards Central London, the next street to the left is Morson Road, the factory situated at the end

Statement (below) from some Ford Visteon workers and supporters (from inside the occupied factory)


We have occupied our factory Ford Visteon workers have occupied our factory since Wednesday 1st April. The previous day in a meeting lasting just 6 minutes we were told that the European company, with plants in Belfast, Basildon and Ponders End, Enfield, was going into administration and that we were to leave - without our wages being paid. Personal possessions could be collected the next day, but at 10 o'clock the factory was locked closed. Workers had already occupied the Belfast factory.
We demand what is due to us The 200 workers who are part of the Ford subsidiary want the same conditions they have always had via "mirror contracts" with the parent company. Up to now they don't know when they will get wages due, and their pensions are to be controlled by the government Pensions Protection Fund. This means a maximum of £9,000 payout, and much reduced conditions! Some of the women and men have 40 yrs service!

The whole situation has been created for news management - announce it during the G20 and it will get buried in the media. And this is largely what's happened. The move is to save Visteon USA money at our expense.

But unexpectedly Unite union members have taken determined action that bosses thought they had eliminated years ago.

The workers want their existing terms respected. Ford Visteon can't be allowed to avoid their responsibility. So far they have tried legal intimidation but have even managed to mess this up.

As well as proper redundancy payments, some are suggesting that the skills of the workers who can make anything in plastic, should be used to make increasingly needed parts for green products - bike and trailer parts, solar panels, turbines, etc. Government investment in this rather than throwing money at bankers could be profitable & save jobs in the long term.

All support welcome Ford Visteon workers have been pleased at the support received from other Ford plants as well, such as Southampton, who are blacking Visteon products. 100s attended our rally on Saturday..

Please come to the factory at any time (especially 12 noon) to show us your support. Get your Union branch or organisation to pass a resolution in support. Help raise money by doing workplace and community collections, and drop in...

Messages of support to those inside: visteonoccupation@googlemail.com

This is a fight we can win. We're off our knees and fighting fit!

Life...death...and that which lies inbetween....

I've been thinking on this lately....and decided to write this. Most of this was written in one long emotional session, hardly even worrying about typing errors or whether it made sense, so please forgive if it meanders a touch.


Sometime in the next month, a year ago today my brother David died. I don't know exactly when, as he was not discovered until sometime after his death. It hit me harder than just about anything else I have experienced, and it seemed so sad, so cruel that as we were finding each other again and getting to know each other after so many years apart, that he would be struck down.

My brother had been through a difficult life. Both of us as children shared a childhood of uncertainty, violence and fear which only changed when my mother met Richard who she married. He brought some semblance of stability and discipline to our lives. My brother was not as lucky as me, and he had been so damaged that he could not relate to the outside world in anything but - for the most part - extremities of fear and love. I had not been affected by the pain we went through as he had, and he became estranged from the family, drifting off into bad situation after bad situation. During this time, he fathered a child but the relationship with the child's mother floundered and for many years he had to fight to gain access to his son. It was still a fight he had to deal with up to his last days.

I've had my own path, often of equal instability and trouble, but I was fortunate in how things turned out. I was so lucky to meet many people whose values were of true unconditional love, and a great joy in life. It is what I still try to be to this day, after some years of feeling lost and rootless, to trust myself and be true to how I feel. Not always easy in this world, and I have no illusions that I am anything more than trying, maybe occasionally succeeding.

I didn't see David for quite some time, years went past. But as I regained contact with David more recently, we had begun to embrace our new friendship. I was cautious but decided I should follow my gut instinct, and let him into my life again. There were times we had such a great laugh, just chatting on the phone, remembering things from when we were kids, and also our mutual outlook on life, which was beginning to mesh and grow stronger as a love for each other. We shared a fascination with computers and the internet and could rabbit on for ages. It was wonderful to see him so much more relaxed and at ease with himself, better than I had ever seen him.

My brother died in early April of last year. He was discovered some weeks later but it was not possible to ascertain what the cause was. I did not know any of this at the time. I had been calling him and calling him, only to find no response and his phones switched off. I was not in the best of health at the time, so traveling to see him was not really an option and I thought he would get in touch again soon, after having been through a bad patch of some kind or other. One day in April I was on vacation at home when I found out. It was a call from someone in the coroner's office in Greenwich, on August 14th, that gave me the news, and I only got the call because she had checked his mobile phone and found my number. I was devastated, and still I find it hard to think of it even now without a lump in my throat and the threat of tears. I was lucky that Denise was with me, and she looked after me and gave me comfort as I tried to come to terms with it. I was allowed to take some compassionate leave by my manager, who when I told her on the phone said with a gasp 'That's two of them'. She had been there when I had got the news of my brother Richards death a couple of years before, as well as my mothers passing before that. Dorothy was more than a manager, and is a friend which I bless my luck in having.

The funeral was later that month, but I was unable to attend as my health was such that I couldn't travel on public transport without great pain. I let my youngest brother Steven know, as I didn't want him to get a call out of the blue with the news as I had and he attended, with our nephew who he had taken under his wing, when my other brother Richard was murdered a few years before.

I knew of my brothers internet name which was Vipaar. He had been creating his own website, all self taught with real coding, not just a touch of HTML. I was finding that sometimes, although I work in computers, he knew as much as I did, and surpassed me too, on occasions. A internet search now finds the handful of posts he had published in a few online forums and I managed to find a few photos of him as well.

In the last few weeks on facebook, I have come to make contact again with many people I knew in the past. There are photos of people, who have aged and grown. On occasion there has been the question asked 'do you remember so and so? I heard he died'. There are folks like Dino, who I did know had gone, and others like Pete the drummer, who I didn't know about.

I have coined a phrase recently 'Its been a dozen lifetimes since...' which seems very true. I have been through so many changes since I first left home. and it has almost been as if I was finding a new family, before moving on, or sometimes being on my own for long periods with almost no contact with others. I've had my time of madness, of depression and stupidity, of too much drinking or other things waiting for some oblivion to take me away for the night or a day.

I have a feeling of having come full circle, in an odd way. Perhaps its encountering old friends, or arriving at some accommodation with who I am, and how I feel about life. I just know that I am glad to be where I am now, sad at those who are no longer here, death seems a bit more real to me now. I just felt I wanted to write this down, to mark those that have passed on, particularly my brother who I miss terribly, and think of nearly every day.

That's all I have to say.

Love

Michael

Intermission....

...its been a while...and till I get my thoughts together as its been a long night ...here's some of the people whose words and music have fought for my attention and won over the years...



'The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to
continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too
expensive to maintain they will just take down the scenery, they will pull
back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way,
and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.'

Frank Zappa, quoted by Jim Ladd, 'Zappa on Air', Nuggets, No. 7, April/May 1977, p.17


"With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people,
Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather
than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.

Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. But you can easily clap
just to say [deadpan]: 'A ha, that's funny, I think that's funny.'
Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding
madly. But they're not laughing."

Tom Lehrer, "Stop clapping, this is serious" March 1 2003


"In a way I’m fortunate. All outsiders of any kind do have this fact that
they bring to bear on every situation all they have, instead of merely
taking it or leaving it, not really considering it very deeply. Every
person you meet is a potential antagonist, and you spend your time making
them over, working away at them, winning them over. Your life is one,
long, tentative flirtation with the world."

Quentin Crisp, 1978 KPFK-FM radio interview



"...those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of
Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War..."

Peter Cook on the model for his comedy club the Establishment, via Tom
Lehrer speaking on the value of satire


"Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore
But so few remember what he was fightin' for
Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim?
He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same? "

Phil Ochs about Woody Guthrie "Bound For Glory" from All the News That's
Fit to Sing (1964)


"We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light
that shines in the darkness--the Ideal of economic, political and
spiritual liberation of mankind!"

Emma Goldman's closing remarks in her address to the jury in U.S. v. Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman (July 9,1917)


"Now 60, County still takes great delight in wrecking the straights and
the conservative contingent of the gay community. "Walking down the street
with a friend and waiting for the people who are walking towards me to
just get up to where I am and suddenly, throwing my arms up in space and
screaming 'Oh honey, his dick was sooo big, all I could do with it was
throw it over my shoulder and burp it!' That is a good one," she laughs."

Complete and Utter County, First published in SX News, 24 August, 2006


"Now there are seven kinds of Coke
500 kinds of cigarettes
This freedom of choice in the USA drives everybody crazy
But in Acapulco
Well they don't give a damn
About kids selling Chiclets with no shoes on their feet
See how we are
"Hey man, Whats in it for me?"
See how we are
We only sing about it once in every twenty years
See how we are
Oh see how we are"

X, See how we are, (Exene Cervenka and John Doe)



"Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free."

from Bird on the Wire, Leonard Cohen


"...The jukebox wailed. He believed he understood the longing of the
cheap tunes better than anyone there. The Wurlitzer was a great beast,
blinking in pain. It was everybody's neon wound. A suffering
ventriloquist. It was the kind of pet people wanted. An eternal bear for
baiting, with electric blood. Breavman had a quarter to spare. It was
fat, it loved its chains, it gobbled and was ready to fester all night..."

The Favourite Game, Leonard Cohen


"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I
go into another room and read a good book. " Groucho Marx


"The retreat from a hippie, illogical revolution to solid Marxist Leninist
good sense is possibly another symptom that social change toward a free
human environment on this planet is losing ground."

Mick Farren, Why bother? International Times, February 1972


"have I doubt when I'm alone
love is a ring, the telephone
love is an angel disguised as lust
here in our bed until the morning comes
come on now try and understand
the way I feel under your command
take my hand as the sun descends
they can't touch you now,
can't touch you now, can't touch you now
because the night belongs to lovers ... "

From "Because the night" Patti Smith



"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to
replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It
dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of
tarnishing." Anais Nin


"If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what" Nan Goldin


"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten, San Fransisco,
last Sex Pistols gig, 1978


"Their sentimental calling signs
Are calculatingly designed
To rob you of your mind and time
And still you listen to
The lulling drone of reassuring voices
Tunes to take away your choices
Make you slaves to fancy words and phrases
Until you're pushing up the daisies
They steal away your freedom
and your love"

Hawkwind, Coded languages from Sonic Attack, 1981



"Senatorial status means little to the Queen of Pop. I have disrupted the
whole Jimmy & the Boys recording and gigging schedule to make sure my name
is on the ballot, and so that NSW has a real choice between madness and
sanity in the Senate." Joylene Thornbird Hairmouth, Jimmy & the Boys
keyboardist.

Joylene Hairmouth ran for house of representatives in the senate and got
over 4300 votes in the end, New South Wales 1980.


"OK, sweaty snugglebunnies" Opus, Bloom County.

(if you're viewing this in Facebook, click "View original post" to see the rest.... :D

Secrets......‘Love not fear makes us more alive'

A favourite quotation of mine is from John F Kennedy who said

"“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.”

Another way to look at this is through the words of the song 'Can't Cheat Karma' by Zounds...here's the lyrics, and then the youtube thing, just click, eh....

One - Two - Three - Go
I've got an ego
It won't let me go
What am I gonna do?

A - B - C - D
Paranoia's killing me
I'm dying on my aching feet
What a way to go

Roll up - Roll up
People always stroll up
Say "Why don't you grow up?"
No thank you!

Big cats, small cats
Some cats are fat cats
Those cats are bad cats
What we gonna do?

There's an awful lot of people in the world today
There's an awful lot of trouble in the streets these days
And it doesn't seem to matter what you do or say
If a change is gonna come you've got to help it on its way

A change is gonna come before too long I know
Peace has gotta come, well, I could be wrong I know
But I just don't know what I can do

You don't trust me and I don't trust you
I bet you wish you did and I know I do
Why have you got secrets? Cause I know you have
If you've got something to hide then it must be bad

A change is gonna come before too long I know
Peace has gotta come, well, I could be wrong I know
But I just don't know what I can do

You don't trust me and I don't trust you
I bet you wish you did and I know I do
Why have you got secrets? Cause I know you have
If you've got something to hide then it must be bad

A change is gonna come before too long I know
Peace has gotta come, well, I could be wrong I know
But I just don't know what I can do

https://youtu.be/I-fhllkiubE

says it all, eh.....if you've got something to hide then it must be bad, talking of being free and open...because if you're hiding something, then there's fear and whats to fear if you are being honest?

As Bill Hicks said one time (actually quite a few times, but then its worth repeating)

"It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one."

live free....not in fear, no more secrets

nineteen....

Back in 1985, there was a song that had the number 1 spot in the UK charts for 5 weeks.... 19 by Paul Hardcastle.....

"In 1965 Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war
but it wasn't
It was different in many ways, as so were those that did the fighting

In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26
In Vietnam he was 19

In inininininin Vietnam he was 19
In inininininin Vietnam he was 19
In inininininin Vietnam he was 19
n n n n nineteen "

It was dance, with spoken word samples for the lyrics...very catchy

However.... another song about the same topic was released in Australia in March 1983 and was number 1 there for 2 weeks...It was by a band called Redgum. You may have heard of them, or maybe not. They never hit it big here, unlike other australian acts like Midnight Oil etc... It was written by the singer, John Schuman.

I prefer Redgums view of things....

"I Was Only Nineteen (A Walk In The Light Green) - John Schumann

Mum and Dad and Denny saw the passing-out parade
at Puckapunyal
It was a long march from cadets.
The sixth battalion was the next to tour,
and it was me who drew the card.
We did Canungra, Shoalwater before we left.

And Townsville lined the footpaths as we marched
down to the quay
This clipping from the paper shows us young
and strong and clean.
And there's me in my slouch hat with my SLR and greens.
God help me, I was only nineteen.

From Vung Tau, riding Chinooks, to the dust at Nui Dat
I'd been in and out of choppers now for months.
But we made our tents a home, VB and pinups on the lockers
And an Asian orange sunset through the scrub.

And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
And night-time's just a jungle dark and a barking M16?
And what's this rash that comes and goes,
can you tell me what it means?
God help me, I was only nineteen.

A four week operation when each step could mean your
last one on two legs
It was a war within yourself.
But you wouldn't let your mates down till they had you dusted off
So you closed your eyes and thought about something else.

Then someone yelled out "Contact!" and the bloke
behind me swore
We hooked in there for hours, then a God almighty roar
Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon,
God help me, he was going home in June.

I can still see Frankie, drinking tinnies in the Grand Hotel
On a thirty-six hour rec leave in Vung Tau
And I can still hear Frankie, lying screaming in the jungle
Till the morphine came and killed the bloody row.

And the Anzac legends didn't mention mud and blood and tears
And the stories that my father told me never seemed quite real.
I caught some pieces in my back that I didn't even feel
God help me, I was only nineteen.

And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
And why the Channel Seven chopper chills me to my feet?
And what's this rash that comes and goes,
can you tell me what it means?
God help me, I was only nineteen.

Redgum are no more now, but I still remember listening to them then, and being lucky to see them on a rare visit to the UK. Their songs inspired me, gave me strength and filled my heart with hope at times when I needed it most.



a little time browsing the interweb and I find it....

The sound is Redgum's live version of the song, with the video from a cover of the song by another australian band 'The Herd'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmgwx77osw

The orginal Redgum video, with the studio version of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY

and now The Herd's version....an interesting lot, hip hop, using traditional instruments as well as the usual beats...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns82tHhJOr0

thats enough for now, I think :D

...get over it...

Passing this on.....just a quickie...

Lobby Stonewall

Bisexual Action have had enough of moaning about Stonewall - Britain's biggest LGB lobbying organisation - publishing reports and recommendations that seek only to change things for lesbians and gay men. As Stonewall believe the way to change minds is through sending postcards, they've produced a postcard to lobby Stonewall to be more bi-inclusive.

The postcard is designed to be printed double-sided - print one side, flip over and print the other side so one side has the "tackling bisexual invisibility" logo and the other has the message to Stonewall.

Over 330 downloads of this resource in the four months from its launch.
Download here, print double-sided onto card, and distribute / mail in.

For those who may be on Facebook...there is a group there too....

....thats all folks!

Its a new dawn, its a new day, its a new life for me....

....well its been a while now.....avoided the usual new years day list of resolutions and all that stuff

...and I'm no longer a smoker....no longer much of anything right now....
A long term ailment of mine has been getting steadily worse this last year and got to the stage where I am now off work for the time being. The mini pharmacy of painkillers has ceased to have any effect, so I am now pushing the docs to find out just what it actually is. You wont need details, those that know me may have seen it when it erupts, if not....well, its just sudden and intense pain which comes out of the blue.
So, I'm stuck at home a lot, spending a bit of time online.....and even succumbed to the lure of Facebook. We now have a Spectrum Haringey Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3790935651 for those that are also bound the draw of FC, do pop in and visit.
This is probably a bit more of a personal write up compared to ones I've done so far, but bear with me....there will be entertainment :D
.....a long time favourite has finally left us which you can see pictured above.....
The New Piccadilly has now closed. An old school cafe in central london, which we tended to like visiting after a meal at the Won Kei, as they did lovely sponge puddings with custard. The waiters wore old classic uniforms and though a tad shabby in decor, the walls covered with theatrical posters it had a feel that was welcoming and quite homely. Sadly missed.

A few distractions....
"Asking whether machines can think is like asking whether submarines can swim."
"A computer is almost human - except that it does not blame its mistakes on another computer."
"A drunk mans' words are a sober mans' thoughts."
"Hate is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die."

....phew getting meaningful and philisophical there ....
so to change the tone.....
"What would Marilyn Monroe be doing right now if she was alive?
Clawing at the lid of her coffin!"
ahem....better ?

just to add a little sauce......ever wondered if zombies could exist?

I'll leave you with this incredibly well researched investigation....

Zombies...