SchNEWS 10th Birthday Events

SchNEWS, the Brighton-based direct action newsletter, will be celebrating its tenth birthday on SATURDAY 16th OCTOBER 2004 in LONDON with

a launch of SCHNEWS AT TEN - THE BOOK. Ten years of get-of-your-arse direct action all in ones book
a MASSIVE PARTY in south London
a DIRECT ACTION CONFERENCE AND BOOK LAUNCH

Also ... Russian SchNEWS is now online!, SchNEWS Korea? could you translate this one SJ?

Labour Party Love in coming to Brighton next week - see schnews on friday or this months private eye for details.

Labour ‘Fringe’

The Labour Party conference in Brighton includes several exciting fringe meetings. It will be difficult to tell if it’s Labour who are flirting with the corporations by letting them come to their annual love in, or the flashy wide boys from big business paying for all the drinks and trying their latest chat up lines on Neo Labour MPs.

The greenwashed, the bad and the ugly from the corporate world are queuing up to pay the estimated £1500 cost of organising a fringe meeting. Other less wealthy organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports struggle to pay the costs.

Leading neo-liberal think tank, the Social Market Foundation and the Blairite Institute for Public Policy Research are organizing a programme of fringe talks. Most of them are sponsored by a commercial organization that has a direct interest in the subject being discussed. In return a representative of the sponsor sits on the discussion panel.

For example, a talk on Tuesday 28th September, titled "Gambling, regeneration, and social responsibility: can everyone be a winner?" is sponsored by Sun International, a corporation that operates a number of casino resorts in Southern Africa. Peter Byrne, its executive director, has a seat on the discussion panel. The panel includes no representatives from anti-gambling organizations, or organizations involved in treating gambling dependency.

The 'fringe' tag is somewhat misleading, as 14 out of the 18 talks feature a serving Minister of State. The SMF programme of talks appears to be very much at the centre of the Blairite conference agenda, rather than at the fringe.

Other highlights include Health minister John Hutton addressing the question “Can the private sector deliver public good for the NHS?”. While you’re thinking about the answer to that one, remember that the meeting is paid for by Capio, a Swedish Health firm who received a £210 million contract from the NHS recently and the Capio President will also speak at the meeting. So the answer is ‘yes’ before it has even been discussed.

All the meetings are sponsored by well meaning corporations with no hidden agendas whatsoever. A meeting on Transport featuring transport secretary Alaistair Darling is sponsored by train company the Go Ahead Group. The housing minister Keith Hill will be speaking at a meeting about housing the “have nots” which is sponsored by the British Property Federation – representing the kindly developers who always have the best wishes of the homeless and “have-nots” at heart.

The two events that feature Home Secretary David Blunkett are notable because both are sponsored by recipients of contracts issued by Blunkett’s Home Office. Siemens Business Services, which is sponsoring an interesting meeting called “Who do we think we are? Identity diversity and citizenship”, is a specialist in identity card technologies and could benefit hugely from the future introduction of a national identity card scheme, which is Blunkett’s personal wet dream at the moment.

The plan is clear, those dirty little neo labour sluts will wallow in corporate sponsored champagne and canape seductions, untill the greedhead perverts have their wicked way with them.

The only meeting where there was no clear agenda was one sponsored by The British Nuclear Group titled “Think While you Drink” – we hopeThe British Nuclear Group does not have a drink problem and that Neo Labour MP think a bit and are able to see through the obvious corporate agenda at their little party.

SchNEWS interviews Chomsky