Newcastle
Projectile debating
This post is coming a little later than would be usual, as I just took my first proper (non-anarchist-related) break in what seems like ages after Projectile finished and only just got back from it.
For those of you who aren’t up on what the Newcastle-based Projectile anarchist film festival does, it really provides the main northern answer to the London Anarchist Bookfair as the place for libertarians to get together (though Manchester, Bradford and Glasgow all have their own regular bookfairs, none are on quite the same scale).
Royal Mail wildcats spread to north of England
The wildcat strikes at Royal Mail which began in Glasgow, spread across Scotland, and ended today also reached Newcastle, Liverpool and Chester yesterday. And Hartlepool today.
Liverpool:
Managers drove mail into the building, which resulted in a wildcat at the Liverpool Mail Centre when workers refused to unload the lorry. The wildcat was supported by Polish agency workers who refused to cross the picket line, and instead went to the pub.
Newcastle:
Jack Common - selected articles
A selection of articles by the undeservably obscure Jack Common, a Geordie who wrote both novels and essays on various aspects of culture and class relations. His friend George Orwell had written of Common: "he is of proletarian origin, and much more than most writers of this kind he preserves his proletarian viewpoint".
A fascinating writer, his analysis of the emerging mass consumerism of the 1930s & 40s seems to closely anticipate the concept of the 'society of the spectacle' later developed by the situationists.
From the endangered phoenix.com website; http://www.endangeredphoenix.com/
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A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Projectile anarchist film festival 2006
Archived web feature about the Projectile Film Festival in Newcastle, Friday 16th June - Sunday 18th June, 2006.
NHS workers strike in Newcastle
Over 600 staff at hospitals in Newcastle were out on a 24 hour strike this week with more potential action coming up.
The industrial action is the result of new Agenda for Change rules which allow new staff to earn more than staff with many years of experience.
This has seen staff with more than 20 years of experience being paid 20p an hour less than colleagues who are new to the job.
