Watching our Firefly DVDs again the other day, I asked Kate, "What is she doing now?"

Turns out, she is doing exactly what I'd hoped she was doing - picketing with the Writers' Guild of America.

The photo is hosted by Whedonesque.com - a fansite for fans, obviously, of Joss Whedon, the man behind Firefly, and previously Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's quite a little Buffy fanclub in the AWL, with Clive and Janine in particular proselytising about the value of Buffy, but I discovered today that Janine hasn't watched Firefly yet. Might have to buy her the DVDs for Christmas...

I've been updating the blogroll for 4glengate.net tonight, and added several new links. One of them is to a new website set up by rank and file postal workers in the Communication Workers' Union, called (obviously enough) CWU Rank and File. I hope the site is a success. The CWU remains one of the most active and militant unions in the UK, but the level of rank and file dialogue and debate is (so my comrades in the CWU tell me) not much higher than that in other unions. I hope that blog helps to address that.

The prime motivation behind the blog seems to be to encourage CWU members to reject the current offer put to them by Royal Mail in response to a series of strikes held by CWU members earlier in the autumn. The offer is out to ballot this week, I believe, and there's already an impressive list of CWU branches which are recommending members reject it displayed on the website. It all reminds me more than a little of another website which advocated and organised opposition to another pay offer. That website though was the subject of hostile measures undertaken by the union bureaucracy organising the ballot, and branches identified as opposing the offer were told they could not do so.

So the Queen's Speech today contains news that a new super-regulator will be created for the NHS and social care, which will, according to the BBC, have the power to shut wards in cases of poor hygeine.

Rather than a regulator that will have the power to shut wards, what the NHS really needs is a regulator with the power to open them again after hospitals have shut them to save money. All over the country there are hospitals and mental health units with bed crises because they've closed wards in order to reduce staffing levels and save money.

The news that Karen Reissmann has been sacked is a travesty and a direct attack on all trade unionists. I must be more naive than I thought, as I had expected that the Trust would pull themselves back from the brink given (a) Karen hasn't actually done anything wrong, and (b) her colleagues have taken a significant amount of industrial action already and have indicated a willingness to go to all-out indefinite strike action if necessary to win Karen's re-instatement.

Others have argued, and I guess they must be right, that Karen is such a good trade unionist, that the bad publicity, the inevitable tribunal defeat and the compensation the Trust will be forced to pay her for what is unquestionably a wrongful dismissal is all a price worth paying to be rid of someone who had organised so effectively on behalf of UNISON to stop the Trust making cuts.

These days a strike isn't a proper strike without a blog. When those on strike include the creative writng talents behind some great TV and film drama and comedy, you know the blog is going to be a good one.

The Writers' Guild of America began a strike today in support of its members' right to be paid for their work when it appears on the internet.

Philosophically, I want information (and that includes drama and comedy shows) to be free. But given that we don't yet live in the kind of perfect world where information, food or anything else, can necessarily be produced for free, and given that the media corporations are certainly not giving away the fruits of the writers' efforts, then I think the WGA deserve support of all workers and trade unionists. For as long as Disney and Fox are making profits from the work, then those who've produced the work should get paid for it.

Well, maybe not just yet, but soon!

Celebrations at 4glengate.net today with the news that my youngest sister, Katie, has got afascinating new job. She'll be moving to London at the end of the month (boo) to take up a position working with some very clever people on a project that I confess I simply do not understand.

Thankfully, Wikipedia explains everything.

The UHL have announced the appointment of Derek Smith as their interim Chief Executive. According to their press release, Mr Smith has "30 years experience in the NHS and is described by Sir Thomas Legg, Chairman of the Hammersmith as, 'One of the NHS' most accomplished leaders and a fine public servant'".

What they forgot to mention was that while at Hammersmith, Mr Smith became the NHS' most expensive Chief Executive, picking up a salary in excess of £200,000 in 2003/04. He left there in June of this year, to become a consultant. Not a medical or surgical consultant, in case you're wondering, but a business consultant. The UHL haven't mentioned in their press release how much they're going to be paying him, but according to the Leicester Mercury it will be £100,000 - for three months' work. This seems rather a lot to me. I've worked it out as a little over £1,100 per day, if you include Saturdays and Sundays. I don't know whether he's planning to work weekends, though.

In the BBC East Midlands Today report on Peter Reading's sudden "retirement", they managed to caption my brief segment as "Ian Holden" - so I guess that might confuse someone in the HR department if they try to reprimand me for criticising the UHL Trust Board...

The story looks likely to rumble on for a while. The Leicester Mercury are reporting that Dr Reading will receive a "golden handshake" of around £750,000 - which is outrageous when compared with the struggle union representatives have had trying to secure redundancy payments for staff who are being told they have to be redeployed into lower grade jobs when their posts are made redundant.

This is truly amazing. It's heartbreaking to watch Stuart Broad trying to work out where to put the sixth delivery, but for Yuvraj, who's been the target of some sledging from the England team earlier in the summer, it must have been a delight.

As a footnote, commentary is from Ravi Shastri, who himself hit six sixes in a single over in a domestic Indian cricket match two decades ago.

The management bullying of Fremantle Trust towards workers in Barnet is well known. Not content with cutting pay and imposing worse terms and conditions on staff, Fremantle have sacked a union rep, Andrew Rogers, simply for playing a leading role in organising a fightback against the company.

But now they've gone one further. LabourStart, the union news information website, was running a campaign of email solidarity with the Fremantle workers, following a request from UNISON, which enabled supporters of the Fremantle workers to email the Chief Executive of Fremantle Trust in protest at the unilateral imposition of new terms and conditions on workers in Barnet. Under pressure from this campaign, Fremantle again lashed out - and became the first employer organisation anywhere in the world to initiate legal action against LabourStart. When Eric Lee, who runs the LabourStart site, refused to halt his support for the Fremantle workers, the threats were directed towards the Internet Service Provider hosting the LabourStart site.