As Leo Colston said, the past is a foreign country. But in these days of cheap international air travel, that shouldn't stop us visiting.  There's been a blogroll link for some time on 4glengate.net to the blog of Michael Walker, a former COHSE activist, which contains an archive of documents and reflections on the history and achievements of COHSE - the Confederation Of Health Service Employees. It's an impressive archive, and every health worker, every UNISON member, should spend some time reading up on it.

This morning, I've been thinking about the UNISON consultative ballot on the below-inflation-for-three-years NHS pay offer which is due to start this week. When we discussed the pay offer at UNISON health conference last month, and subsequently, according to reports from colleagues around the country, officers of UNISON and those lay members who want us to accept the offer have been at pains to stress that rejecting the offer would necessarily imply taking industrial action. Not just industrial action but sustained industrial action. I think that word is included just to pour scorn on those public sector workers who have already held a one day strike in support of their campaign for better pay, but scorn in such a situation is the chocolate pot calling the kettle black. At least, as many of my colleagues in Leicester keep telling me, the teachers are doing something. 

As I couldn't get down to London today for the lobby of Parliament, I've taken the unusual step of writing to my Tory MP, Edward Garnier. I don't often write to him, what with him being a Tory, and a lawyer and what with our last meaningful contact being me standing for Labour against him in 1997, but since I couldn't go in person to support Karen Reissmann, I figured that I shouldn't let him off the hook.

Thanks to the excellent 'write to them' website, I've just sent him this message... 

While UNISON health delegates ponder their decision on the three year pay offer from health workers, the new issue of the Nursing Times is published today with details of their online survey.

It shows that 71% of the 2400 people who took part don't want this deal.

Obviously this is just a quick snapshot but given that band 5 nurses are amongst the groups who stand to do the best, it is indicative that healthworkers do recognise a pay cut when they see one.

At the meeting tonight organised by Manchester Community and Mental Health Unison, Graham Pink spoke eloquently about his sacking 17 years ago for whistleblowing.

The assorted leaderships of the NHS unions have demonstrated today why we're in the mess we are over NHS pay. As late as Friday afternoon there was little hard information available about this year's pay proposals, yet by Monday morning, UNISON and the RCN had apparently negotiated a proposal not just for this year but for next year and the year after as well.

If the proposals even came close to reaching UNISON's stated policy of an above-inflation pay rise for all NHS staff then this might have been worth the conflict with the other unions, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, but it doesn't. It falls so far short as to be shockingly bad - a below inflation, real terms pay cut for this year, followed by two more below inflation, real terms pay cuts to come.

Colleagues in local government have been made a final offer for this year's pay rise and apparently it's not very good. At least one UNISON branch has already decided to ask the national body responsible for leading their strategy to reject it and organise a campaign of industrial action.

Meanwhile, confusion reigns over our pay rise in the NHS. We're supposed to already have it, but while some in the media are saying an announcement is due imminently (although no-one who is waiting for the pay rise would consider the end of the month to be imminent) others are reporting that the NHS Pay Review Body hasn't even reported to the Government yet.

On Thursday night I attended a presentation to GPs by the Virgin Healthcare group - a new company set up by Branson's money-making empire to seek out ways of exploiting the NHS for profit. Before going in, I met up with members of Keep Our NHS Public and the local UNISON branch, who were protesting outside (see picture).

The Virgin Healthcare proposals sound a lot like Lord Darzi's polyclinics - lots of different 'services' under one roof, centred around a GP surgery (or several GP surgeries combined together in some unspecified way). In the Virgin Healthcare model, the additional services would include things like laser eye surgery, dentistry (only private dentists, though, it was made very clear) and pharmacy.

A small but effective protest outside the Space Centre in Leicester last Thursday, when Virgin were seeking to pursuade GPs of their plans to create 'Virgin Health Centres' - effectively privately-run polyclinics with GPs acting as a honey pot for customers, sorry, patients.

Members of Keep Our NHS Public and Leicestershire Health UNISON branch turned out to argue against letting the infamous Virgin brand (crap railways, price-fixing airline and dodgy bankers) anywhere near the NHS. 

George Parr on NHS privatisation, courtesy of YouTube and a recent book launch...

Meanwhile, because the irony of the above video is lost on some people, Richard Branson's Virgin Group has set up Virgin Healthcare - to try to find ways to make money out of primary care. Their plans appear to be to run clinics, in which GPs can rent space, where all the non-clinical staff (receptionists, and so on) will be employed by Virgin, and therefore not get NHS pay, terms and conditions, or pension rights.

A temporary repreive appears to have been won in Derby, where nursing staff of all grades were threatened recently with pay cuts.

I attended a meeting in Derby a couple of weeks ago where nurses reported being forced to re-apply for their existing jobs, and having their job descriptions re-written, as the Trust tried to justify plans to 'review' the skill mix and pay grades for many hundreds of staff across the hospitals.

Southern Derbyshire Health UNISON, which had called the meeting, had registered an official dispute with the Trust, together with the RCN, and this does, at least, seem to have dragged the Trust back to the table for further talks. No changes will be made for the next three weeks, while talks continue.