Archive for the ‘Rory MacKinnon’ Category

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Westminster’s War On Disabled Workers

In Rory MacKinnon on April 28, 2012 at 12:00 am

[First printed in The Morning Star, 28/04/2012]

“It’s not a day centre,” Ray Dearman booms. “I had a bloody hard job.”

The former forklift driver is close to tears, but the small crowd of disability campaigners and trade unionists cheer him on: “Our people rely on working in Remploy factories because they’re treated with respect.”

Dearman would know. He was cut loose after twelve years when the state-owned enterprise’s Brixton factory shut up shop in 2008. He says he hasn’t been the same since.

Between rising unemployment and employers’ prejudices against his learning disability, his career in the four years since has consisted of a single three-week work experience scheme at Asda.

Meanwhile the dehumanising nature of long-term unemployment has brought on bouts of suicidal depression, he says: at one point a decorator’s firm offered him 1p a day to deliver their rubbish to the local tip.

“Since December I’ve been told to write poetry. But that’s not a job. Remploy was a job and I was proud of it.”

Ray Dearman’s job is long gone. But thousands of workers just like him face the same bleak future under Con-Dem plans to close the country’s entire network of Remploy centres over the next two years.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Invisible Children: Public Awareness, Private Intelligence

In Rory MacKinnon on March 16, 2012 at 5:00 pm

[A piece fleshing out my previous post — first printed in The Morning Star, 17/03/2012].

When Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 campaign exploded onto the internet last week, it was just a matter of hours before critiques of every colour followed suit. [You can read Invisible Children's counterpoints here.]

The Californian not-for-profit’s slick viral video recounted their efforts to convince the US government to send US forces into central Africa to depose the Lord’s Resistance Army general Joseph Kony — arguably the world’s most infamous wielder of child soldiers.

But African bloggers and journalists decried the video’s depiction of Africans as “victims lacking agency, voice, will or power”, while international relations experts warned of its overly simplistic narrative: the LRA left Northern Uganda six years ago and is reportedly on the wane; meanwhile re-igniting the conflict would necessarily mean fighting and killing the very same children the Stop Kony campaign sought to protect.

Still others cast a wary eye over Invisible Children’s own operations: A self-described “advocacy and awareness organization”, just 37 percent of its budget went to programmes in Africa compared to 43 percent spent on ‘awareness’ — projects like last week’s video. It appeared Invisible Children had never been externally audited, and for some reason had an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.

But the Morning Star can reveal a previously unknown wing of the organisation here in Britain — with ties to an international private intelligence agency. Read the rest of this entry »

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I Just Traced Invisible Children Back To Watergate

In Rory MacKinnon on March 15, 2012 at 5:41 am

It’s a provocative headline, but I’m entirely serious when I say that at least one Invisible Children staffer has ties to a multinational private intelligence agency. Skip to the bottom if you like, but please read it.

I was pretty busy with one thing and another last week so I didn’t get a chance to chime in on Invisible Children’s incredibly sus Kony 2012 campaign. If you miraculously haven’t heard anything about it, you can start with the excellent riposte at Visible Children, then some Actual African People, then the DSG’s heirs apparent at Demand Nothing.

As you’ll see one of the things that’s now coming out is the organisation’s … unorthodox approach to budgeting, with more money going to ‘awareness programs’ than actual operations in Africa. And unusually among non-profits, they seem to have an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.

Well, I finally got around to digging locally (with a tip from a friend) and found there’s an Invisible Children in the UK too — company no. 06679805, first incorporated in 2008. Its directors are Robert Bailey, Margie Dilenberg, Ben Keesey, James McMurtry, Laren Poole, Jason Russell – all staff listed on the US non-profit’s website – and one David Kelly DePauw Young, a UK resident. Read the rest of this entry »

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Occupy’s Object Lessons: Why The Camps Were Critical

In Rory MacKinnon on March 6, 2012 at 1:54 am
Protesters stand on a fort of furniture and shelving, challenging a police operation to remove them.

Photo by freelance journalist Stacey Knott.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/03/2012.]

And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers. — Acts 18:3

“OCCUPIED 137 DAYS, CLEARED IN 137 MINUTES” blared Wednesday’s Evening Standard as cleaning crews quite literally scrubbed Occupy London Stock Exchange from existence.

The capital’s exiled activists have refused to be cowed, rallying at their sole remaining camp in nearby Finsbury Square. But the loss of St Paul’s Square is only the latest in a string of setbacks: with a grim inevitability, the movement has been ceding ground since December. The repossession of public spaces has been a key image for the movement, with more than 20 outdoor sites across Britain at its height — but four months on, Nottingham, Norwich, Kent and Finsbury Square are all that remain.

The refrain among critics and commentariat alike is that the camps have outlived their relevance — as if the centuries-old predations of capital vanished the moment Miliband and Cameron parroted identical platitudes about ‘responsibility’.

But even the campers themselves have been divided on the issue: even as the eviction was underway, defender Pedro Lima told me they had “spent enough time with the 1 percent”. The week before, regular spokesman Ronan McNern had lamented their legal battles as “a major energy drain — sometimes you just want to get back to the cause itself.”

But a look back at the battle over St Paul’s shows the conflict has, if anything, only served to highlight Occupy’s discontent with the status quo. Read the rest of this entry »

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Some Things I Meant To Say Re: Occupy & The Riots

In Rory MacKinnon on January 3, 2012 at 1:57 pm

Kiwi Summer on Radio New Zealand National

[A ridiculously long postscript to my interview with Radio New Zealand's Kiwi Summer (listen here)]

I love radio, but every time I do a spot I always come away kicking myself because there’s a million more points or stats or clarifications overlooked without which I’m convinced I’ll sound like a blithering idiot. Luckily Charlotte and Sonia of Radio New Zealand’s Kiwi Summer have kindly offered to repost this on their Facebook page so I can completely undermine the point of a radio interview with a massive wall of text. So let’s get cracking.

Occupy & The August Riots Are Rooted In Dispossession
While Occupy and other protest groups have been frequently portrayed in media as a public menace, even the most right-wing media outlets have been wary of associating them with the ‘feral youth’ narrative that immediately sprang up in the wake of the summer’s week-long riots. Many Occupy activists I’ve spoken to have outright rejected any notion of common ground: we are Peaceful Protesters with Placards; they were just Violent Looters. Certainly there’s almost no demographic overlap — and there is an ethnic component to this which is delicate but vital — but it seems blindingly clear to me as an outsider at least that both Occupy and the riots could only have burst upon the country in the way they did because of a backdrop of political disenfranchisement and massive social deprivation. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Leveson Inquiry & Employment Law

In Rory MacKinnon on December 20, 2011 at 1:41 pm

[First published in The Morning Star, 17/12/2011. See my previous post on the issue in March here.]

The wheels of Justice Leveson grind slow but fine — and last week was no different as News Of The World ex-editor Colin Myler took the stand.

With nearly a decade’s worth of skullduggery to draw on, the senior judge’s inquiry into media ethics has always risked falling prone to the same sensationalism it set out to investigate: from high-profile victims’ statements to the Watergate-like machinations of Murdoch’s most trusted executives, media coverage has favoured individual scandals over the systemic intimidation of journalists that spurs them.

But with Myler in the spotlight, barrister Robert Jay plodded on with an even more vital investigation: the workaday world of today’s tabloid reporter. How, in the most literal sense, do these people live with themselves? Read the rest of this entry »

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Occupied Press Club: Apply Within!

In Rory MacKinnon on October 31, 2011 at 11:09 pm

No big bloated essays for now – just a notice that I’ve been talking to Ryan of the Occupied Wall Street Journal about putting together an unofficial network of correspondents at occupations worldwide. In the same way that the papers are reflecting the issues in each individual community, a bit of international coverage would offer an unfiltered view of daily life in the camps.

I’m not camping full-time, nor would I expect anyone else to, but you would need to be visiting/camping at least 1-2 days a week and get along to the main events since the point is to source these stories from protesters on the ground. If you are living there full-time, even better.

And best of all would be if you’re covering an occupation in a non-English speaking country (or where English is not the language of choice). This is an international movement and it would be a shame if our readers didn’t hear about all the important things going on in Europe and Asia and the Middle East and Central America. Read the rest of this entry »

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What Would Jesus Donate?: The Big Money Behind St Paul’s

In Rory MacKinnon on October 29, 2011 at 10:44 pm

http://onthefencewithjesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/jesus-money-changers-temple6.jpg

[First published in The Morning Star, 29/10/11. This piece was filed on Thursday, the day before the Cathedral announced it would take legal action to evict the protesters.]

The public furore around London’s occupation movement hit a new peak on Thursday when the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral quit, reportedly over internal pressure to take legal action against the social activists of Occupy London Stock Exchange who have sought sanctuary on the cathedral’s steps for the last fortnight.

The Revd Giles Fraser, who the campers regard as an ally within the church, issued a statement just days before his resignation insisting that rumours the cathedral had closed its doors for commercial reasons were “complete nonsense.”

But in light of his sudden exit and the cathedral’s loss of income – an estimated £20,000 a day – it’s worth taking a look at who does control the cathedral’s purse strings. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Occupied Times Of London: Issue 1 Out Now!

In Rory MacKinnon on October 28, 2011 at 12:14 am

My job at the Morning Star has trucked me off to all sorts of events this year: anti-war demos, anti-cuts marches, the defence of Britain’s biggest Irish Traveller camp, a student occupation up at Glasgow University and of course a bunch of trade union conferences. But Occupy London Stock Exchange is the only one so far where they’ve actually started their own newspaper instead — and I’ve somehow found myself on the editorial team.

Issue 1 of The Occupied Times of London is out today: 2000 free print copies floating around central London and an online version here. It’s an independent weekly paper, with no control or influence from the camp’s Media Working Group (which handles press releases and all that sort of thing). The staff are all unpaid volunteers, as is the printer Aldgate Press, and contributors and content are anyone from camp residents on daily life to international commentators on the occupation movement as a whole (rumour has it Noam Chomsky is working on something for the next issue). Read the rest of this entry »

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Fox & Werritty: The Middleman Who Wasn’t There

In Rory MacKinnon on October 22, 2011 at 12:24 pm

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/10/10/1318278448823/Adam-Werritty-and-Liam-Fo-005.jpg

[First published in the Morning Star, 22/10/11.]

“When is a lobbying scandal not a lobbying scandal?,” asked spin doctor Gill Morris in a Huffington Post blog earlier this week.

Ms Morris, whose firm Connect Public Affairs bills everyone from Age UK to health workers’ union Unison, was adamant the Werritty affair of the last fortnight simply didn’t count.

“The fact is, Werritty is not a lobbyist, nor is he like any lobbyist I know,” she wrote. “So why the usual knee jerk reaction?”

It’s certainly true that the way Adam Werritty cultivated his relationship with former defence secretary Liam Fox was fairly unorthodox: a “personal friend” who dropped in on Dr Fox at work 22 times since he took office, accompanied him overseas on 18 known occasions – several of which involved government business, during which Werritty organised private meetings with foreign politicians and senior officials – and even bandied around faux-House of Commons business cards describing himself as “Advisor (sic) to the Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP.” Read the rest of this entry »

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