Hello

Hi Nick, nice to have some REAL space at last! ;-)

Welcome Everyone.

Just throwing my twopennorth into the ring…. what is everyone’s situation with the bedroom tax in their day to day job – are you finding people having problems, if so, how severe? Hearing things of late that are really making my blood boil, just reinforcing what a badly thought-out, short-term “fix” it is. Yet again we are saddled with a piece of legislation that will, down the line, end up costing far more than it will ever save. Not to mention the social cost…..

Its not something that has been mentioned to me more than a couple of times and it ended up not affecting the people concerned but its an absolutely fatal policy and as you say Karen ill-thought out. At the end of the day though, the social cost is not something that matters to the people responsible for it so I doubt it figured much in their plans, such as they were…

Today me, jose and louie met with a couple of community organisers who work for knightstone housing association to discuss the possibilities of organising together, sharing information, contacts etc. It was a really good conversation, talking about taking community and social work back to its radical roots and lots of possibilities for developing our work in the future, locally and nationally. In fact, those of you who are doing the PG Cert will already have met Poppy who is doing it with you.

I think it would be good if this forum was not limited to our cohort or indeed just this programme. There are so many people doing similar work around the country it might be a little short-sighted if we excluded people it could be advantageous to work with. If there were things that we thought should be Cohort or CO Programme only, there is the option for private threads and discussions that we could have on here.

Thoughts?

“it might be a little short-sighted if we excluded people it could be advantageous to work with.” Certainly agree there, would be a huge own goal. To create anything worthwhile and long-lasting you need numbers, let’s face it, and many people can work in isolation – that online support would be necessary and appreciated. To me, any strengthening of our network is welcome. As you say, sensitive topics that needed to kept within the programme could have a private discussion forum within the group, but for a lot of things there will be crossovers from other areas that could be shared for the good of all. Oh, and I see you managed to change your moniker! :-)

Thanks Karen, I’m very excited about the possibilities of all this!
yeah managed to change my name, would quickly get confusing otherwise!

Hi all, good to see this space going:-) I must say that my experience is similar to Nick’s – I haven’t heard the bedroom tax mentioned many times but I will be starting listening in social housing estate soon so we’ll see what comes up…

Yes, heard last week that one of the biggest housing providers in the area are going to start handing out food parcels to those tenants who pay the extra “tax”. There are over 1,200 households affected in the Ashington/Newbiggin area (300 in Newbiggin alone) and it is in Newbiggin that they will be piloting it. Begs the question though, what will the quality of the food be (nutrition etc), how long will this last, and more importantly, wouldn’t that money be better spent finding a more productive way around this insidious policy? I also heard that if the tenants miss one week paying their rent, the parcels will be stopped. All this is direct from a representative of the housing provider themselves.

Been an interesting week, we’ve been doing drop-in sessions across a lot of the local cafes in the area. Finishing off at a pub/restaurant tomorrow (where else on a Friday?!), then off to the bank to open a bank account with a newly constituted group – yay!

Hello, i am speaking from Brazil, greetings!

The movements here around are forwarding in your issues but there is a ‘right wave’ in our country too doing idiocies to fill the heads of unsuspecting of preconceptions on our on the issues that we want to move.

The peoples of the movements are the people from the social movements and student are still asleep on the issues of free software and developing these communication platforms of the movements themselves. Are accommodated on Facebook and our country had no an education about free software to realize that that social network is just an expression of that.

Good to speak to you. Be back later.

Dear Mutantez, its great to hear from you but I’m very sorry but this is a private group. I must have made a mistake and allowed requests and a public profile. I’ll have to ask you to leave the group as it private. Thank you for your understanding and interest.
Nick

Oh, i’m sorry. I just entering at the we.riseup me and did not know that I posted in the wrong place. I was just looking for somewhere to get to work, now I want to get closer to we.riseup and to help develop my work with you. I chose this group because I thought it would certainly help to organize the organizers.

Att.

Oh dear, supervision has turned into a boot camp……..

What happened Karen? Ours was alright, though pretty low on numbers

Hmm, we had Helen. It just seemed very regimented, cut and dried.I felt some of us were put on the defensive, and I certainly didn’t feel listened to when I gave my case study. Might have been the mood I was in, and possibly the way I explained it, but it was certainly seemed to be the worst supervision I’ve had, I didn’t feel good when I came out of it, was glad when it ended. Only good thing was hearing everyone else, as usual (though we had a small group too). Came out of it with “practice what you preach” running through my head…….:-(

Ace catching up with everyone in Bristol for Community Resolve’s training – intensive and thought-provoking. And thanks to all of you for your support, I’m grateful and touched – best wishes xxx

Yes, it was great to see everyone and the training was interesting and well-done too. Hope you’re doing ok Karen x

Interesting goings-on in Stoke….
www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/11/...

Hi guys,
Finally managed to work out how to do anything on this site including remembering my password and login name…….
Brilliant weekend……. Weird but good to see so many organisers up for organising from within the program, and so many people wanting to look at our working conditions and look for solutions.
Great job everyone, we need to get organised for the COCO meeting in two weeks!

Looking for somewhere to post this inspirational quote, this page seems the most appropriate –
“Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hi all,
Just adding my voice to the ‘Hello’ thread. I’m using an old Riseup login but there ain’t many Glorias about so if you know me, you’ll know this is me!

To everyone else, I’m Gloria, I’m CO4, working in Leeds. I may only have a paid job for the next 7 weeks but I’m committed to community organising for the long term if the right space can be made.

I’m also part of the Organisers’ Council which so far has been the only mechanism for workplace representation/ issues with the programme for Cohorts 4 onward (see the ‘Unionising’ thread if you’re interested in more details/discussions about workplace representation).

I’m really please 50 ppl are signed up to this and if most of those people are engaged in these discussions, that will be progress indeed….

G