London Clarion 1894 members...

Is it a general bicycle maintenance thing?

So we can't use LMNH for the next meeting (Monday the 5th Dec), shall we away to the Coach and Horses, would we like to approach the Bread and Roses, what are your thoughts Comrades?

do you want to ping that visual over to me brother diggs?

digger, can you please list all those that attended on monday.. also only a couple new items:-

1. producing spoke cards for planned rides with 10% donation to LCEF someone might like to fix a date for a spin around town to inlcude Cable Street and Highgate Cemetary (Karl Marx)

2. list of suggested reads from brother Norman which included The Ragged-Trouser Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (Robert Noonan) plus other titles which i will decipher from my notes for the LMNH bookshelf..

Al

Bruce,

On the workshop at Occupy it is a blank page at the moment, they were looking for more practicle workshops to match the theoretical. I was going to see who was interested then suggest a workshop.

On the next venue if there is a good majority saying yes I am up for Bread and Roses alternative can I suggest the Calthorpe on Grays in Road where we hold the film society shows plenty of room and no load music.

Al, I was there on Monday

Zebs

arg... the way my work is at the moment the monday early evening slot is a bit of a shitter for me coming along-being freelance doesn't always translate into greater freedom ;(

Let me know if you fix a date for a ride up to highgate and hope to make it along on the 5th.

Coach and Horses would presumably let us use the upstairs (and for free). Bread and Roses also has an upstairs room (used to have our branch meetings there when I was a TGWU/Unison member) and might let us have it for free given the political association. Dunno.

On the subject of rides, I've been reading some HG Wells & William Morris (News From Nowhere) with a view to devising some rides based on the journeys in them.

Have we settled on a venue for the next meeting?

I'm going to give the Bread and Roses a bell, see if their room is free. Will do the same for Coach and Horses (forgot to last night, when I was there, but then I was drinking, so that was likely to happen).

Are many / any people from this thread out tomorrow?

It is the first time I have taken any kind of industrial action and I have not taken the decision lightly at all. I feel quite conflicted viz. not having any kind of dispute with my employer (either my school or headmaster) but wish to express my discontent with a number of things and stand in solidarity with other members of my union. I have expended a lot of time and energy thinking about what the right thing to do is.

To echo, and in some ways counterpoint, the above post, I have been asked to work at thebeeb tomorrow. As a freelancer I'd be alarmed at replzcing a striker for the day, but I'm part of an industry that relies heavily on freelance labour so I think in this case, it's a day like any other.

I don't have a pension at all.

I love the suggested journey-rides clarion, exactly what I'd hope we might be able to offer as a club branch, amongst other things. Also I'd be interested in attempting a ride joining sites of leftist historical and herstorical significance: match girls, cable street ...

I'm a Unison member, but was not balloted on striking as I'm not part of the collective bargaining (though I am in the NHS pension). I'm fully in support of the strike, and have waved and cheered the pickets I've seen on my way in (three PCS; one GMB; no Unison, sadly), as they're fighting for my pension.

Even if I were included in this action, my job would be exempted in the ordinary manner as it's involved with the provision of urgent care.

I haven't been balloted on the strike as I'm a private sector worker. However I fully support the strikes and my fiancée, a teacher, is striking today. Ironically she's spending the day marking (unpaid), because otherwise she'll never get caught up with it as it stands. The Worm, Gove has handed high-achieving state schools like hers huge budget shortfalls, which are intended to force them to take academy status (since he had failed to attract many schools to his plan without coercion). This means that in addition to higher pension contributions and lower pensions, she is dealing with a pay freeze, non-replacement of colleagues leading to bigger classes and more classes per teacher, erosion of planning time, and continuous shifting of responsibility for assessment from exam boards to teachers, and it is no longer possible to either maintain appropriate standards or even deliver everything expected of them. The strain upon teachers is currently enormous and completely unacceptable - so in addition to all this my fiancée is now also having to deal with her colleagues' breakdowns. The difficulties facing teachers go far beyond the pensions they are currently struggling for.

[edit] Ought to acknowledge that I don't think that teachers are unique in having had additional pressures piled upon them; I'm sure that there are similar stories in many areas of the public sector. By referring to the particular example of teachers, I was not intending to dismiss public sector workers in other areas. Just re-reading the above rant made me feel like I might be giving that impression.[/edit]

Oh, and I have no idea where the Coach & Horses or the Bread and Roses are - any ideas which one we're meeting at?

1. list of suggested reads from brother Norman which included The Ragged-Trouser Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (Robert Noonan) plus other titles which i will decipher from my notes for the LMNH bookshelf..
   
   

Al

I think the other one which got a particular mention was Merrie England.

Merrie England is a bit difficult to get hold of, though there are copies on ebay. It's written by Robert Blatchford, or Nunquam, the editor of the Clarion.

Personally, I think it is a bit dated.

Oh, and I have no idea where the Coach & Horses or the Bread and Roses are - any ideas which one we're meeting at?

The Bread and Roses is in Clapham. Coach and Horses is in Brixton but right on the edge of Clapham.

Coach and Horses are happy to let us have the upstairs room next Monday, so I've provisionally booked it. Bread and Roses wasn't available next Monday but could be in the future, with notice.

So is that definately the Coach and Horses? I do not want to cycle all the way down to Brixton to find it is somewhere else.

Where is it by the way?

Can I remind you Guys of the Hackney Bikeworkshop fundraiser this Saturday http://www.lfgss.com/thread76072.html

Remind the Girls too, ZC!

Coach & Horses in Clapham is on the very west end if Acre Lane, opposite jct with Northbourne Road.
It's a great venue for us as we can finish meeting quickly and then join fixie forum crowd downstairs: they'll be tucking into 2for1 burgers (inc veggie option, natch).

Sorry I've lost track: it's on this Monday, 5th Dec, or 12th?

5th. And we're deffo in the Coach and Horses

PS my day with Auntie was very ace!

i can't make monday. can someone post notes here afterwards - A x

Can't make tomorrow either. Apologies.