We're planning to focus on longer interview-based articles with photos and video this year, so will be aiming to post longer articles about three or four times a month. It's a case of fitting it all in around work, etc, although that should be easier this year.

Should be putting the first articles for this year up sometime next week.

Taking a break for Christmas. Back in the New Year.

hangbitching.com

Here's a photo of a magnificent graf someone has painted directly opposite Canary wharf on the south side of the Thames, so that all bankers in C Wharf can see it - inspired.

Am shifting some of my operation to a new wordpress site at www.hangbitching.com.

It caters better for the longer articles I'm doing atm. 

I've started off with a series of longer articles about people in the northern town of Skelmersdale that I've been working on. The first two are up at the new site, and will be followed by two more shortly.

I will migrate relevant articles from this site to the new one, but that will take a while. Will keep this site open. 

Wow.

It seems that Sadie has called time.

It'll truly be a loss if she goes - on her day, she has a depth and turn of phrase to rival Marina Hyde. A brilliant writer.

Am still at work on a collection of articles about people in the underfunded, under-resourced West Lancashire town of Skelmersdale. Will start posting these in the next couple of weeks.

Best of luck to the posties as they continue their strike action. Good luck, too, to refuse staff in Leeds who are in their eighth week of strike action in protest at their Tory/Lib Dem council's plan to cut their wages from an average of £18,000 to £13,000. Jon Rogers has a good article asking union branches to donate to the Leeds workers' hardship fund.I hope people do - things are getting pretty tough for people in low-paid jobs.

Don't often link to the mainstream press, but make exceptions for the exceptional.

Here's Victoria Coren in support of the postal workers and their strike action.

It's absolutely brilliant, and absolutely socialist. And in the Guardian, too - who would have thought?

Btw - am working on some pieces on Skelmersdale atm, so back with those soon.

Deranged political nymphomaniac (maybe necrophiliac? - given the state of the four political parties she's belonged to) Johanna Kaschke thrashes back into frame this and next month as she pursues her libel actions against the excellent Dave Osler, and Alex Hilton, and John Gray.

Says Dave on his blog: 

'LONGSTANDING readers may remember that I am facing libel action from Tower Hamlets Tory activist Johanna Kaschke following a post about her on this blog in 2007. She is also suing two other Labour Party members, Alex Hilton and John Gray, over related issues.

'Alex, of course, is prospective parliamentary candidate for Chelsea & Fulham, surely an easy peasy Labour gain in the current political climate. Bankruptcy, which will result for all three of us if Ms Kaschkde prevails, will disqualify him from becoming an MP.

'I spent all day yesterday in the High Court, listening to Alex's appeal that an application for summary judgement be upheld, and I'm just about to head off for a second helping. His case is being argued on a point of law, rather than the underlying merits of the matter. The ruling will probably come about lunch time.

'Meanwhile, I'm on for a four-day jury trial, which will cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds, and is set to commence on November 23. 'Overtly Tory' blogger Iain Dale has agreed in principle to appear as an expert witness on my behalf, which should underline that this is more than simply a party political spat.

'The uncontested facts here are that Ms Kaschke, as a student and member of the centre-left SPD in her native West Germany in the 1970s, helped to organise a benefit concert for Rote Hilfe, an organisation officially designated 'left-extremist' by the state; the gig was designed to raise funds for the legal fees of Baader-Meinhof Gang suspects; that she was herself subsequently arrested on suspicion of terrorism; and that she spent several months on remand, after which she was released and compensated for unfair imprisonment.

'It is further uncontested that Ms Kaschke nominated herself as Labour candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow in 2007; that she received just one vote; that shortly thereafter she defected to George Galloway's Respect party; shortly after that, she joined an as-yet-unspecified Communist Party; and that shortly after that, she became a Conservative.

'She was, in other words, a member of four political parties in 12 months. Ms Kaschke contends that simply listing her affiliations, entirely accurately, denies her the right to freedom of association under the European Convention on Human Rights.

'Interestingly, the jury will also be asked to rule on whether or not it is libellous to call somebody 'one cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte'. Not my words, but those of a reader, left in the comments box. If I lose on that point, the consequences for internet freedom of speech are clearly considerable.'

Indeed they are.

All the best, Dave - we watch with great interest. We have complete confidence in you and your work.

Full marks to Iain Dale, as well.

Surely Johanna's more than one cherry short...?

A few more Hammersmith and Fulham goodies for you, comrades:

We hear that the New Labour guns who run Unison have finally given beleaguered workers at Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council permission to ballot for strike action.

The strike will be in protest at a major downgrading of staff terms and conditions - a slash and burn of decent working standards that the council has been threatening for about a year.

It's all surely on now.

We trust absolutely that the regional officers that Unison's London office has parachuted in to help run the leftwing Hammersmith Unison branch are up to the sober task of organising strike action.

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As it happens, Hammersmith and Fulham staff have already chucked a spanner in council leader Stephen Greenhalgh's works with a brilliant little action of their own.

Last week, they were all - technically - sacked, then re-hired on the lesser terms and conditions. They had to sign up to the lesser terms and conditions if they wanted to be rehired.

Staff didn't make this quite as easy for the council as it sounds. It seems that as they signed, hundreds of them also noted that they were signing under duress. Then, they each lodged a case form for unfair dismissal - the argument being that they were sacked, unfairly, before being forced to sign up to the new terms. 

Now, the council has a great big pile of forms to process. That's got to be a pain in the butt. HR will surely lose its rag. 

Enough for now: suffice to say that it takes an awful lot of anger and energy to organise the sort of Up Yours action we've described above.

We expect plenty more of the same.

We've said it before, comrades, and we'll say it again - people who use and provide public services have no time for the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem line that they and the public sector must be destroyed if the nation is to be saved. Take it from those of us who talk to people who use and provide public services. They don't believe they're responsible for the recession. They want the banks to pay.

More to come.