(... a page to announce Labour meetings and events that may be of interest, including reports on them. For more information ring 313843 or email here)
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Future meetings, social and money raising events

24th February - Linda MacAvan MEP

2cnd March - Social

30th March - Austin Mitchell on Housing

All at Labour HQ, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby starting at 7 PM

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Labour Conference - report and discussion

Our delegate, Julian Dugard, gave an interesting presentation of the main events in the conference hall and of several fringe meetings. Other members who had attended added their impressions.

The general feeling can be summed up as workmanlike but not inspiring. No major theme seemed to stand out. This could have been that the next election was too far away to require rabble rousing speeches, or perhaps it was that nowadays few contraversial decisions are voted on and so there is less excitement about what may happen.

The view put forward in the discussion was that not enough was made of some of the Coalition's diastrous policies, particularly on the economy. Somehow the message had not got through to the general public. It could be seen that some utilities and the railways were failing, but there was no pressure to get them renationalised or otherwise dealt with.

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Fabian meeting about the media -As a former TV insider Austin said you could sometimes feel that some points he made were influential because of public and perhaps government reactions. It was much harder for an outsider to judge. The popular press aimed to support the current opinions of their readers and thus tended to be conservative in their approach. This was often confirmed by their Conservative inclined owners. Reform of the press was difficult because of the danger of interfering with the freedom of the press. The Press Commission was ineffective. Parliamentary bills calling for a ' right of reply' had all failed

Linda inquired where people got the news from. Look North was the most common source as well as the local press. She thought there was justification for another news provider on the internet.

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Speaking to our local TUC Linda McAvan MEP told how the work of the European Parliament had become more important. Consumer protection was an area where they had agreed some useful legislation. One example was the caps being put on the charges of mobile phone calls and texts.

Now that Britain accepted the Social Charter, workers will benefit from the decision to increase by four days their minimum annual paid holiday entitlement.

It was helpful and useful to establish some common rules across national boundaries. They often had requests from companies for problems to be sorted out to make international trade fairer and easier.

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