Today at Parliament...

A Labour Party commitment will keep me from today’s march and lobby of Parliament in support of fair pay for public servants.

This is a shame since I am fascinated by the novel approach of relying upon lobbying and petitioning in order to secure a pay rise – it’s nearly as exciting as changing the world one hashtag at a time and I can only imagine how foolish the founders of our movement would feel now if only they could come and see that it is now possible to achieve one’s objectives without significant sacrifice or struggle.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, this is not a blog post about how the leadership of the trade union movement have repeatedly failed to lead a serious struggle against attacks on the interests of trade union members since the organised capitulation over public service pensions in 2012 (I’ll come back to that topic I’m sure).

So I shall set my cynicism about the TUC and UNISON to one side.

My interest today is in the changes which have been made to the proposals from the Boundary Commissioners to implement the Tories’ gerrymandering plans in England in particular. Revised proposals for changes to the boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies have been released today.

From a purely parochial point of view I am pleased that the plans to do away with Brighton Pavilion constituency have been abandoned – but from a national point of view, these unnecessary proposals to reduce the number of elected Members of Parliament (which will doubtless lead to a further increase in the larger number of Members of the unelected House) are a deliberate attempt to increase the chances of the Tory Party in the coming election.

Given that these proposals are all based upon the numbers on the electoral register prior to the increases in the run up to the 2016 referendum and to this year’s General Election, there are compelling arguments to drop this boundary review and start again.

Probably the simplest way to do this would be to bring this rotten Government down as soon as possible.

Now there would be a good reason to go to Parliament…