I’m @spartacus

A week in Twitter. (For an explanation of terms see foot)
One of the reasons I was looking forward to Unison conference was the chance to meet my fellow twitterer @debauchery. Before we arrived we had decided to enliven the conference with some real time, live tweeting. To coordinate this wee needed a hashtag, and because at our preceding Local Government Conference they had used the tag #lg09 I started using the tag #ndc09 (National Delegate Conference). Soo for the couple of days leading up I merrily contributed to #ndc09 with tweets. Pretty mundane stuff, but I got a few replies and was even retweeted with my comment about buying a netbook so I could tweet from the conference seats. I even looked at some posted photos  of the conference being prepared. It all looked very exciting.

Hmmmm, though... something didn’t seem right. The more I looked at #ndc09 the more Less it looked like I expected. All the contributors were men, and although I thought stuff like twitter may be more populated by men than women I expected a few more women than absolutely none at all. Hmmmmm again, I though…where were the tweets talking about arcane detail of Unison rule changes ? Where were those tweets sniping at the union’s leadership ? Where were the tweets talking about the best drinking holes in Brighton ?

and most of all why were so many tweets referring to hardcore computer geekery ? Hmmmmm again again .... a penny dropped, albeit slowly through the treacle of my thoughts. A bit of digging further, I found the root of my Hmmmmmms. #ndc09 apparently stands for the Norwegian Developers Conference taking place in Oslo, the same week as our conference. I really do put the Twit in Twitter (better than putting the Fake in Facebook)
I decided though, that I would continue to follow the Norwegian Developers Conference. After all I had no clue how to develop a Norwegian and I had always wanted one of my own. Must admit during the week they did appear to be having a livelier time than us and I did continue to update them with our progress (always spread the union word), and have now tweeted comradely solidarity to our Norse comrades from Unison in Brighton. (Turned out NDC was a Microsoft thing)

Soooo we needed a new hashtag, a bigger hashtag, so after flirting with other options I suggested the snappy and innovative title #undc09 (U being for Unison). We were all set, we merry band of followers. It really added a dimension to our conference to have opinion from all corners of the hall. There was also some interesting debate which mainly involved me against everyone else. Wasn’t it ever thus. . . This was to my knowledge the first trade union conference that had a real time twitter feed. Indeed we were tagged by a HR Blogging site pointing its readers in our direction. I reckon all considered our conference tweeting experiment was a success, but watch out next year, with more participants and better publicity it could really take off and become a valuable mainstream resource for debate and connection to a wider membership. The best thing of course was to meet @debaucherydean. It just shows those who dismiss social networking, that virtual friends can become real friends.

A much more important aspect of Twitter came to the fore later in the week. Twitter found itself as the predominate method to get news out of the Iranian protest movement and the violent crackdown by the forces of their illegitimate government. The Iranian secret police had been successful in squashing nearly all other news outlets and the broadcast media were being restricted in its efforts. Twitter though was still working. Hashtags such as #iranelection became a constant feed of news, views, pictures and videos from the streets of Tehran. As a twitter community many of us changed our avatars to a green version to show some solidarity. Then the tweets came through suggesting that we change our listed profile locations to Tehran to help disguise the real Iranian twitterers. Effectively we all shout “I’m Iranian”. I’ve no idea if it really made any difference, but if it did hamper the ability of Iran to block individual twitterers then it was certainly worth it.
Saturday night was an extraordinarily harrowing and humbling experience. I followed the events though the hashtag and regular ReTweets from @debaucherydean who did a great job filtering out some of the noise, and at one stage organised a phone campaign to the Foreign Office to ensure their Tehran embassy was open to the injured. At one point a video was posted showing the aftermath from the shooting of a young woman. She was being carried by a group of protesters and they laid her on the road as her father ran over. At first you could see no sign of a wound. As she lay their her eyes glazed and then blood started to seep out all over her face, from her eyes, from her nose, from her mouth… and then she died. It was the most stark and upsetting video I have ever seen and to know It had happened just moments earlier made it all the more real. This video brought home the plight of the Iranian protesters, with heavy heavy thud. We later found out that her name was Neda. Her face with live with me for a long time. I’m not sure whether to post the link to the video. If anyone wishes to see it then I guess you can track it down.
Other tweets that night were for information between protesters. Advice was given as to how to be protected from chemical attack. Information was posted as to which foreign embassies were taking in the injured. We also say great compassion from the protesters. One picture showing a fallen riot police motorcyclist being shielded by a protester was particularly humbling (see above).
A Twitter week from the mundane to the vital.








Twitter Terms Explained :
Tweet = a short message under 140 characters, can contain links to pictures or videos
@username = your twitterer username
Followers = the people / feeds that you follow and follow you
RT or ReTweet = a tweet passed on
Hashtag or #something = a webpage automatically created to elicit shared real time contributions on a topic

Bye Bye Brighton

I love Brighton just a bit more each time I’m here, a city with vibe, verve and verisimilitude (I just like the word).

I love its burnt out pier with its twisted, haunted beauty jarring against the shimmering sea.

I love lying on the surprisingly comfortable pebbly beach, listening to the cool hubbub from the very many underarch beach bars.

I love the twisting Lanes with their quintessentially quirky and damn expensive boutiques.

Most of all i love Brighton because I’m at Unisons national delegate conference. Sadly this may be our last visit to Brighton until the Conference centre sorts out its seating arrangements, which for some delegates amounts to 4 days of cruel and unusual punishment.

I for one will miss it, even if my sore bum doesn’t

 

Planet conference is a time and place like no other. A time and a place that is truly egalitarian. Where else can a rank and file everyday worker, who in daily life goes about relatively unnoticed, hold 3,000 people enthralled for those 3 minutes of a speech. 3 minutes that can change opinions about face, and influence a million members and more, just with the power of an experience shared.  Politicians would give up an inflated expense claim for that sort of exposure.

Unison’s Conference is writ through with unwritten tradition.

The gauntlet of leafleters, campaigners and paper sellers that greet you on the first morning, whom I swear would be there however early you arrived.

The hush as we stand heads bowed, reflecting on comrades lost during the previous year.

The warmth of applause given to each declared “first time speaker”

The mostly good natured and healthy bantering towards our elected leadership.

The baiting of the Standing Orders Committee and the unflappable humour of it’s chair, Cletus’s responses.

The fake joke emergency motions submitted on the last day.

The final day song by Cletus which this year was a version of Mercy by Duffy delivered in a singing style that defies definition and makes Jeremy Hardy sound beautiful (see I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue).

Most of all what I love about conference is the feeling of belonging. Belonging to the greatest trade union in the nation. I have so many friends now, that I may see for just 1 week each year, a number that grows each time. This time in particular my fab Twitter friend @debaucherydean or Laurel. (More about my Twittery week later)

Sometimes, listening to the passionate debates you would think that we are a union split asunder, but I know that behind our differences there is so much more that binds us. I know that when the crunch comes we are there for each other. Successive governments since the eighties have sought to limit us, to hamper us, and to break us, but we remain.

We are here, We are growing and We will prevail ….. We are Unison

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Vulcanised

So Sunday morning Vicky and me headed off at the crack of dawn (well if not the crack, the echo) to RAF Cosford just a couple of runways away from Telford.

I seem to have become an Air Show junkie, this being my second in as many months. Now as I said below I’m a touch conflicted by these events, what with me being a lefty relic from the eighties CND movement and all that. I remember being a sixth form anti war barracker pontificating against the Falklands Conflict yet here I will be oooooing and ahhhhing at a Vulcan bomber that was like the ones that bombed 19 year old Argentinean conscripts. I decided that at least i could throw in the odd tutt amongst those oooos and ahhhhs.

We arrived at the airbase at 8ish. Some cars were being stopped and searched by eager young military personnel. I was just relieved that we hadn’t used my car, which is so full of junk, they would still be sifting through it now.

Neither of us had been to this show before so we weren’t sure of the drill. We decided to find a spot by the runway and mark our pitch with our camping mats. I must admit next to the elaborate set up of Air Show veterans, complete with windbreaks, chairs tables parasols at al, ours looked a bit woeful, but we at least had a good spot. After all location is everything.

We left our pitch confident that it would not be disturbed, to wander around the stalls. The highlight was the Enigma code breaker machine, which if Hollywood is to believed was bravely stolen by Jon Bon Jovi. Our second favourite stall was the Air Force Intelligence stand, which had the best free stuff. Vicky impressed one of the imposing becamouflaged men manning the stand with the probing question, “What do the intelligent people do ?”

We weaved our way back through the growing throngs, picking our way carefully through the maze of picnic rugs and deckchairs. Our stake was still intact even though in was now hemmed in on all sides. As we slowly baked under the gas mark 8 sun the show began. The appetiser was a display by large model aircraft, which once aloft were tricky to distinguish from the real thing, except for their lawnmower sounding engines.

The first proper display were the parachute display team. I was pleased their parachutes worked better than my childhood Action Man one, which if my memory serves me right just made the Action man’s death plummet more colourful. I was most impressed with the accompanying music which was from the brilliant documentary film Fog of War. As we sat, lay and stood our way through 6 hours of flying Vicky and me jostled to take the best photographs. Vicky and me are so competitive that we will compete/argue/bicker over just about anything. We were well matched, I may have had the better camera but Vicky’s reactions are like a fast jet pilot to mine of a balloonist.

Once the mighty and spocktacular (sic) Vulcan had become a dot we decided to make a bolt for home. It was clearly going to be a battle to get off the car park in under an hour. Our finely tuned sense of direction, spatial awareness and spritely car control served us well. We finally left the car park 2 1/2 hours later after managing to find the longest and slowest moving of the many intertwined car cues. As I flopped down on my sofa at quarter to nine, I looked at the gaping empty suitcase needing to be packed for the next morning’s trip to our Brighton conference I thought If man can put 40 tons of metal in the sky then I’m sure I can pack in the morning.

Its not the most poetic end to a post but when your as knackered as I was eloquence can get stuffed

BTW there are some planes in the album at the bottom

 

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Mia Culpa (Mya Cockup)

Hi, I’m Jenny. I’m a blogaholic. I’s been 2 weeks since my last post….So I need to pull my typing finger out (its this one!).

Truth is, that I’ve had my annual bout of self obsessed anxiety, that left my mood as low as Trevor Chapel grubber. I blame Nick Griffin, if only because I choose to blame the deluded, fascist, shit in a suit, BNP leader for all life’s ills, now that the bankers have dropped off the radar. Actually he does have a bearing on my recent lost fortnight. Tomorrow I’m off down to Brighton for Unison’s (and my) highlight of the week, our National Delegates Conference. For the first time our branch had a motion on the agenda, motion 90 : Stop The BNP. I was looking forward to moving a motion that I’m so passionate about, and to be able move it from the perspective of BNP infested Stoke-on-Trent.

That was until I called the Conference office to routinely enquire when the delegates credentials were being sent out. I was met with a heart gulping response. “We don’t have anyone registered for your branch”

I felt completely flattened. How could this have happened. I was as sure as sure can be that I had posted the forms, but they clearly hadn’t arrived where they should of. Had I become convinced by some sort of false memory ? Who knows what, I still don’t, even after a week of brain racking. I just know that all evidence shows that i can’t have done a task that I was utterly convinced that I had. The upshot is that our branch will not have any delegates at this year’s conference, and only allowed to have visitors in attendance. I was gutted, but more than that I felt I had let the branch down badly. I am ultimately responsible for 2,500 members being denied a democratic vote. My mood tumbled, as my sense of shame shot up. I found myself unable to blog, unable to tweet and unable to function with any purpose. My head was a maelstrom of negative thoughts, building upon each other in waves and leaving any sense of perspective trailing in its wake. 

Its been a week, not to forget, but to learn from. Eventually the patience, kindness and common sense of my friends and colleagues did drag me out of this pathetic self induced and yes, just darn selfish stupor. So here I am on the eve of our conference still looking forward to a week in which, although I shall be attending as a visitor, I aim to play as fulsome a part as possible in the proceedings.

Its now 11pm and by now I should have packed for our pilgrimage South, but I’m just too darn tired to move from this laptop. This is because I’ve just got back from a scorching day at RAF Cosford Air Show. Now I know I should instinctively  disapprove of this glorification of machinery of death, being at heart a lefty, peace loving hippy, but I do love a big roaring plane. Vicky had sprung the suggestion of the air show just yesterday, and it certainly beat our planned Car Boot sale, as fun day.

So tomorrow night, once I’m ensconced in my hotel room I shall inflict yet more air show based hi jinx on you all, and of course complete with pictures of huge earthshaking hot jets, darting spinning swooping aerobatics..oh and a couple of blokes having a kip.