Arthur Scargill who led the action on that day will return to speak along with another veteran of the miners' strike, Ken Capstick, former Vice-President of the Yorkshire mIners, and Ricky Tomlinson, once imprisoned when building workers took strike action in Shrewsbury, but now better known for his role in the Royal Family. Banners will be in evidence again, including some from Socialist Labour Party regions, the party Arthur Scargill currently leads.

The extent of cutbacks seems to have no end scything through services and initiatives affecting the most vulnerable. In 2009 the City Council crowed about its core values with businesses set up to employ the "disabled" like Shelforce "Disabled" is not a term that the organisation uses believing that focus should be on peoples' abilities rather than any attribute that might disadvantage anyone. Now the rug is being pulled away from a group who find employment problematic. Since this is a business then the City Council needs to put a bit of effort into making sure it works. It hasn't found difficulty supporting Capita, which practically runs the Council, through thick and thin success and failure. What Capita is successful in is avoiding paying taxes and its able bodies (maybe it does employ some who might otherwise go to Shelforce, I don't know but would take a guess). The demise of the Connexions service is another wonderful achievement of the Birmingham version of the ConDems who, as we in Birmingham knew, foreshadowed the bunch now ruling the country. The ability of a united workforce to topple them would be a just response to their action against the people. The reactions of Thatcher followed by Blair took away jobs and rights in an attack on what Maggie called "the enemy within". Just who is the enemy within to most of us has become abundantly clear as our productive industry was cut back from 80% to 20% allowing the unproductive financial services (of which Capita is a supreme example) to take us over. The events at Saltley Gate elicited a profound response.

"The time was about ten o'clock and there was a hush over the Saltley area. 3000 miners altogether, Welsh miners singing, Yorkshire miners, Nottinghamshire miners, Midlands miners. And yet nothing happened. You could see apprehension on the faces of the police. Here we had a situation where miners were tired, physically and mentally, desperately weary. They had gone through nearly six weeks strike action, they had gone through a three months' overtime ban. they had gone through the worst battling encountered in strike action in any time in recent years. Their comrades had been arrested, one of them had been kicked to bits and yet they were still battling on. I readily concede that some of the lads were a bit dispirited that no reinforcements were coming. And then over the hill came a banner and I've never seen in my life as many people following a banner.

As far as the eye could see it was just a mass of people marching towards Saltley. There was a huge roar and from the other side they were coming the other way. They were coming from five directions, there were five approaches to Saltley; it was in a hollow they were arriving from every direction. And our lads were just jumping in the air with emotion - a fantastic situation.

I heard the police talking - Sir Derek Capper was one, Donaldson his deputy - the tactic was simple: get the pickets coming from the east to go through to the west and get the pickets from the west - the striking engineers - to go through to the east. East to west, west to east. past each other. I got this megaphone and I'm yelling like hell: 'When you get to the picket line, Stop! Stop!' !. They were trying to tell me to shut up and I said "You try today, no bloody shutting up today. These boys are coming to our picket line.' And they were piling up like sandwich cake. as far as the eye could see they were just pouring in. Saltley, the area of Saltley was now just a mass of human beings, arriving from all over, with banners.

The only time this crowd opened up was when a delegation of girls from a women's factory came along all dressed in bright white dresses. They plunged through and one of the lads shouts: 'Go on officer, tell them they can't come. Try and hold them.' And no police officer moved, you know. Who'd have dared trying to stop those girls coming into that square? Nobody. The crowd was absolutely dense by this time. We were in the centre of it and everybody was chanting something different; some were chanting 'Heath Out'. 'Tories Out'. 'Support the Miners", 'General Strike', a hundred slogans were being chanted. I got hold of the megaphone and I started to chant through it: 'Close the gates! Close the gates!' and it was taken up, just like a football crowd. It was booming through Saltley: 'Close the gates'. It reverberated right across this hollow and each time they shouted this slogan they moved and the police. who were four deep, couldn't help it. they were getting moved in. And Capper, the Chief Constable of Birmingham, tool a swift decision. He said 'Close the Gates" and they swung them to. Hats were in the air, you've never seen anything like it in your life. Absolute delirium on the part of the people who were there. Because the Birmingham working class had become involved - not as observers but as participants."

Gove is attempting to force primary schools to become academies. Where it becomes known there have been large protest meetings. The problem is that any crank can apply directly to the Department for Education with a submission for Free Schools without even the local authority being aware. How planning for education will take place, or accountability can happen is a complete mystery. Since New Labour pushed Academies there is no opposition to the privatisation of education from any major party.

I have heard rumours that organisations like book publishers are planning on running a number of schools, where of course they will have a captive market for their publications. Money is the key. Education as a serious area of study has disappeared. The less anyone knows about it, how children learn, is all dead and buried in the ideological world of market forces.

Pensions not affordable? That's what we've been told. When I started teaching in the nineteen sixties there were complaints that the pension pot was too fat and something had to be done about that! We're told we're living too long and that's not affordable. We're not told this. Yes the fat cats are taking the cream. Be sure in the festive season they are very merry and jolly as they plan bigger and better scams for 2012.

Politicians of all persuasions seem to be dazzled by the prospect of wealth, and when we had thought they were busy looking after our interests they were feathering their own nests and joining in the "tax avoidance industry" The former Prime Minister, leader of New Labour and Peace Envoy in the Muddle East spends his free time showing others to massage their greed upwards as their Christian duty.

In Birmingham we have Stephen Hughes as Chief Executive who seems to have been instrumental in bringing in Capita to the City Council where they helped set up the "Business Transformation Partnership" I think it's called. I asked Mr Hughes at a recent meeting at the Council House about the 2012-2013 budget if Capita staff would be taking swingeing cuts as Council staff were. I thought that Capita didn't come cheaply, although its track record was not very good to say the least. Mr Hughes said that Capita had helped the Council save money by identifying which buildings to axe. Did he mean children's care homes, or community facilities housing local libraries and other services? While Council employees either have no job or a massive cut to their already low pay Mr Hughes and wife don't appear to have shared the pain. Mind you there appear to be crocodile tears aplenty when Mr Hughes apologised for the stress that had been caused to city council employees by loosing their income and livlihood. Capita seem to show their appreciation regularly to Mr Hughes by footing the bill for his entertainment and delight.

"Caribbean and Latin American leaders vowed to bring their economies closer together as they sealed the deal for a new regional bloc in Caracas on Saturday.

The 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) includes Cuba as a full member and excludes the US and Canada, in contrast to the Washington-based Organisation of American States." Source "Morning Star" 3/12/2011.

Hopefully they will have in front of them the failed European model which was developed on the back of Capitalism as propounded and propagated by the United States. The exclusion of the United States and Canada and the inclusion of Cuba mark the organisation as something fundamentally different from the norm established by the dominating north of the continent.

After 12th December for every £1,000 you will get £500 so if you still want to benefit you need to get moving. How this encourages the solar industry in Britain is anyone's guess. The government's claims to be green are in tatters while once more Mr Cameron is laughing all the ay to the bank.

Ten years or so back banks were regulated to some degree, but now the big five financial institutions in the US are exempted from regulations. Ten years back these bankers would be in prison for stealing our money, but they have used the spoils to buy off members of the US Congress and have become untouchable. A small elite who can dictate their terms. Meanwhile the 99% protesting at what is happening are finding the full force of the state coming down on them as tent cities are cleared away and peaceful protestors are getting pepper sprays an worse. Elderly people and veterans are getting caught up. An 84 year old woman was sprayed and two ex army veterans have been seriously wounded . Why aren't the police protecting the people? Presumably because their bosses, like Mayor Bloomberg in New York, are also representative of the wealthy elite and give the police their orders.

In the UK the Anglican Church has spoken out on the effect cuts are making on the most vulnerable and asking the government to think again.

In Birmingham it has taken years to find out how Mikey Powell met his death while being taken into custody. He was rammed by a police car, hit by police batons, sprayed with gas and sat on. This was after his mother had requested help because of Mikey's mental illness. Justification was given for violence on this vulnerable person because it was "believed he was armed".

In Wolverhampton Jenny Cooper was badly beaten by police in the course of being arrested for a trumped up charge for which she has been cleared by a jury. It was so arranged that she was convicted of resisting arrest in the magistrate's court before standing trial for the substantive charge. So she still has a record because the police are keen to protect themselves from any charges against themselves for thuggery.

Will the "landmark report" report in the Guardian shed light, heat or both on the matter?

Then they have their Business Secretary, Vince Cable, saying out loud that he has a sneaking respect for the protesters' message and that the wrong people are getting a raw deal. Stand up man and say what you think about the agenda of your running mates and their avowal to finish with the Public Sector, The dispossessed are being dispossessed. Stop pussyfooting and say what you think!

Cameron announced sometime ago that he wanted to see an end to the public sector. He's already ensured councils do his dirty work by cutting their grants and now he wants one million jobs more to go. Statutory services can't be met or are cut to the bone so what is on offer is meaningless. The Birmingham Council House meeting which I described in an earlier post made that clear.

Chris Khamis, chairing the meeting, called me early on. I wanted to know where the cost of using Capita, one of five or six firms of accountants or bankers by any other name was shown. I didn't think they came cheaply and I wondered if there was going to be savings in the amounts we paid them in the next budget year. I had in mind salaries of their staff and whether they were facing severe cuts in wages or redundancies. Stephen Hughes told us how they had helped Birmingham cut back in use of properties, saving considerable sums. No mention of those buildings such as Hawthorn House in Handsworth Wood, a community resource after local people "saved" it, housing a library with a children's playground on its site. After its sale for private use Handsworth Wood has become an amenity-free zone.
I wanted to know if Capita was a company that operated off-shore on a Caribbean island avoiding paying tax. Did the City Council support an organisation that didn't pay its taxes. I got no answer to that. It seems that an essential component of Capita's business is telling others how to do just that!

"Have your say on the budget" proclaims the form we are asked to complete with four questions about "top service priorities", all of motherhood and apple pie proportions. Do we agree that "protecting vulnerable people (children and adults)" should be a top priority, or encouraging investment to create jobs and helping people into work"? Perhaps we ought to "strongly disagree" about "improving education and skills (employability)" should go. Or perhaps we could dispense with "a clean, green and safe city". These are "essential services" so when did they become inessential. When the Lib Dems backed the Tories to take over Birmingham in 2004 is the answer, providing a blue print for a ConDem government that puts profits first and people nowhere.

I have witnessed a case where an frail elderly Asian woman was being reassessed for her care needs. The social care and health officers who called wanted to be sympathetic but they were working to a higher agenda. They started off trying to justify a decimation of the time carers spent saying "we don't know how the amount of time was justified in the first place". This undermines their own colleagues professionalism and judgement doesn't it? The family is in receipt of direct payments and pays carers of their choice to look after their mother and grandparent. The result of the cut was that the carers found the task impossible in the time allotted and left. It would have meant that their already low pay was cut back further. Cameron wants an army of volunteers to step in. They are people who can survive on fresh air presumably in his "Big Society".

"We are all in this together" proclaims the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No we bloody aren't. There's absolutely no shared pain at the top. Those with the power to make decisions do so at the people's expense unashamedly. "Sorry" says Stephen Hughes to the employees whose "hurt" he feels he as not acknowledged before. What difference does that make? It would have been better to have said nothing.

From one point of view the City Council, like others, has been put in a totally impossible position given the government's intention to dispense with the public sector. What we, the public are being asked to do is to select from a prepared list where cuts must inevitably fall. It is like being asked to choose your method of execution. By taking part it gives the decision makers some sort of justification for something they know otherwise as having none.

While I have heard the Archbishop of Canterbury, even if cautiously, express his reservations about Establishment behaviour I did not expect the Corporation of London to fall in line. I am deeply suspicious about that. There was a prospect of not just the usual suspects turning up, but Christian groups declared they would encircle the protest. What was the reason for them to decide not to proceed with their threats of eviction. Did Dale Farm loom too large. This time it wouldn't be travellers they faced but some of "their own". Images of violence at St Paul's would not send a good image around the world of London.

Meanwhile in Greece it has been suggested that the people have their say at taking on the crippling austerity measures. That would involve paying back the huge amounts that the bankers suggested they borrowed in the first place. What will Goldman Sachs make out of the returns when they gave crap advice in the first place? The 1% of likely beneficiaries clearly don't want the 99% to even have an opinion. Our governments are backing the banks again. The bankers believe they've got us over a barrel and the politicians agree. Greece has called their bluff. Occupy London will stand tall by doing the same, in league with Occupy Wall Street and the other movements mushrooming throughout the world of Capitalism. Crisis? What crisis?

The question of Christianity becoming part of an establishment has always been a contradiction of terms. Here we are about to witness this being played out in front of us as the protestors on the steps of St Paul's are served with eviction notices. The image of Dale Farm is conjured up. To close a call for many with a Christian conscience. Some have spoken about forming a ring around the camp. The Church says it does not want to see violence. The City of London has said nowt. The full force of the law will fall on the protestors - and no doubt any "Christians" who stand in their way.

Presumably then the US will support the new Libyan administration which can hardly claim not to have blood on its hands. I believe it's important to hear what Saif has to say. NATO cannot claim that it stuck to the UN mandate as is claimed. It was clearly about safeguarding civilians. To the NATO allies it was about safeguarding the oil supplies they want so badly want and will use any pretext to get it. Probably a lot more suffered as a result. I would think that NATO will not welcome Saif Gaddafi telling all he knows about what has been going on in Libya. As usual the media have followed a narrow one-sided path so as usual we remain ignorant of the full story. Curiously Al Jazeera seems more pro-western while Russia Today has provided a broader outlook.

Greece. It has new been agreed to write off 50% of the debt, but still interest runs into unimaginable figures. Who gains from this? Presumably the banks who, Goldman Sachs prominent among them, advised their government and those of many other indebted countries to spend like there was no tomorrow.

In Birmingham the City Council is either axing the work force or slashing already low salaries by thousands. A few years back the Con Dem authority hired Capita to "modernise" services, including finance. I haven't heard if Capita employees are being cut back or receiving wage reductions. I wouldn't mind betting that they will be asking more for their services in reducing the city's essential services or passing them to the private sector for profit. So OUR Council Tax no longer pays for services we need, it goes into the n(gr)eedy hands of the financiers who have been ever more adept at creating useless, self[serving work for themselves. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/exporting-corruption-0 to perform tasks local government did for itself. It falls into the hands of Cameron who has declared he wants to roll back the state. As with Thatcher the intention is to dismantle. Since Thatcher we have seen New Labour come in, but instead of turning round Thatcherism Blairism became an effective twist privatising more than Thatcher dreamed of in her worst nightmare.

What else does Capita run? http://brixtonblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/lambeth-council-capita-contract/has just awarded a contract for collecting its taxes amid concern from it tax payers. Some years ago it took over the Teachers' Pension Fund and will presumably help with the reduction of payments those, like myself, thought we would get. This year a move from increases based on final salary to average salary has helped reduce costs. Some have been saying that teachers' pensions are unaffordable. When I started teaching in the 60s there was some embarrassment over the size of the teachers' pension pot which was considered then over large and needed to be reduced! We note that those in the 1% (likely to include Capita et al executives at least) can name their pension in telephone number terms. Clearly the 1% will be happy to run the earth without the encumberence of the rest of humanity.

Another extra judicial killing and not just the Sun but a good deal of the rest of the UK media crow about Britain's role in Libya. It is claimed it was not the same as Iraq and that there was a UN mandate for this. As I remember it the agreement was to "protect civilians". Wasn't "regime change" ruled out? The execution of Saddam Hussein was a political act of revenge by his enemies, that of Osama bin Laden (if it was him - I have my doubts, especially when Benazir Bhutto claimed he had been dead for some time. as has she herself) and now Gaddafi. Who is next. Well not the tyrants in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, made rich, powerful and untouchable by the same bunch glowing with pride at this barbarism. Is this supporting terrorism? No it asking for people to act like the civilised individuals they claim to be. It is they who are recruiting sergeants for terrorism. They are also the friends of the arms dealers who want bigger and better wars, and increasing markets for death and destruction. Their operators won't get hurt when they drop their illegal cluster bombs for little children to handle as toys, or play their computer games as they operate drones from their armchairs thousands of miles distant on real people.

The scene of Gaddafi's end did look like the climax of the fox hunt where the baying hounds close in and tear their quarry to pieces. Oh no Gaddafi "was caught in cross fire" as the kindly, humane rebels ferried him to hospital in an ambulance. Didn't look like that to me on the Russia Today video.

What's next in Libya no one knows. Will they get the standard of housing, health and education that was once reported? Will they get the "democracy" promised by the likes of Cameron, bursting with pride at what has been done, while at the same time consigning his own people to savage cuts with many forced to the point of going without food, energy or essential services. Even Libya was better than that!