RED RAG Free 9-21 July Next Issue Co-ordinator is Bridget. It will be a three week issue - please note. Copy deadline Thursday 19 July News 724087, 374532, 662302 Events 724087 Going out 61361 Distribution 665676 Send articles to Red Rag, Box 79 Acorn Bookshop, 17 Chatham St, by 19 July - - - CURIOUS LOGIC Reading's right-on left was presented with a pretty dilemma last Monday night: back the miners (Right on, Brothers!) or back women's right to equality (Right on, Sisters!). It was impossible to do both without walking an exceptionally crooked dialectic tightrope. This feat of ideological agility was neatly side-stepped by the organizers of the dilemma, Reading Miners' Support Group, who simply kept quiet as mice about the fact that the venue for their benefit gig with the Beat Back Band, Reading Trades Union Club in Minster Street, is the staunchest bastion against the tide of equal rights this side of the Salisbury Club. Women are confronted with two bars at the T U Club: one is happy to take' their money (sound commercial management is non-sexist, apparently); the other decrees that not even the most dedicated, hardest-working woman, trades unionist - including those who have done years of service in the cause of the mineworkers and their families - will be admitted to membership of the club. Miners' Support stalwarts even managed not to show red faces when it was pointed out that theirs was the first 'official' event in years to breach the de facto boycott of the club observed by virtually the entire union movement in Reading (Reading Trades Union Council, which sponsors the RMSG, will not itself meet there). Their 'keep quiet and maybe nobody will notice' handling of the issue received unwitting support from many whose anti-sexist credentials are beyond question but who understandably just could not imagine that blatant Alf Garnettry of this kind could persist in a so-called 'trades union' body in the 1980's. (Including, sad to say, the collective editorship of the last Red Rag, who would have commented accordingly but will know better in future. Rag's outgoing Going Out Compiler was more clued up and simply left the entry out altogether.) Not everyone on the alternative left - when the penny finally dropped - was satisfied with bland reassurances about "working for change through participation" (good one, that) or committees "democratically elected by the membership" (another masterpiece): sometime between midnight and 6 on Monday morning the club frontage blossomed With posters reminding would-be benefit attenders of the club's discriminatory policy and posing the question "Miners' fight or women's rights?" without prompting the answer. The posters disappeared rapidly; questions about the Miners' Support Croup's curious choice of venue won't vanish so easily. DB - - - GREEN SUMMIT The Lancaster House economic summit on 9 June produced a breathing-space for Latin American countries smothered under mountains of debt, but little else was achieved. Behind the blatant electioneering, the rhetoric about free trade, democracy, etc, the economic strategies are unchanged: the world's richest countries still hope to solve all their problems by becoming even richer. All the 'established' political parties taking part in the Euro-elections - left, right or centre - agreed. They propose to cure unemployment by stimulating economic growth, whether by deflation, reflation or something in between. Only the Green and Ecology parties dissented. Having foreseen all this, some 140 people from 16 different countries organized 'The Other Economic Summit' (TOES) to develop an economic strategy suitable for an international civilisation aware of its dependence on a fragile planet. TOES received very little coverage the press, but produced an impressive array of contributions, many from well-known specialist writers. One study, by Roefie Hueting, had been commissioned by the Netherlands Government in order to work out the effects on the country's economy of full-scale ecological policies. The study used established econometric models to examine the implications of policies to prevent pollution, save energy and resources and develop alternative energy sources and organic agricultures: these would involve economic decentralisation, urban renewal, reduced working hours and more satisfying work. The results of the study showed that these policies could halt the destruction of the environment and eliminate unemployment, but they would imply a static level of gross national product - an end to economic growth. Other contributors to the Other Summit argued that conventional economic growth in the rich countries would do little to help the cause of employment, the environment, social welfare, world development or peace: - Employment is unlikely to benefit since conventional growth would displace as much labour as it absorbs; - The environment would suffer since productivity is most likely to rise in those industries that do the most damage - oil and petrochemicals, roadbuilding, public utilities and minerals; - Social welfare is likely to lose as much as it gains from economic growth: more cars mean more accidents, more factories mean a poorer urban environment, and so forth; - The idea that development in the poorer countries is dependent on further growth in the rich ones is absurd in a world of finite resources: such a strategy would leave the Third World even more firmly dominated by multinational companies; - As Green CND has pointed out, continued economic growth in the rich countries will result in mounting competition for scarce resources, posing perhaps the most serious long-term threat to world peace. The Other Summit called for a 'New Economics' based on - Writing off the debts of third-world countries and developing self-reliant strategies aimed at meeting the needs of the poorest peoples; - New ways of sharing work and new areas of employment based on conservation and renewable resources; - More local self-reliance, less long-distance trade; - Development of new small-scale technologies; - Policies to broaden the ownership and control of productive assets and capital, enabling more people to organise aid control their own work; - New ways of providing access to land for more people; - New policies to distribute incomes more equitably at a time when the link between incomes and conventional employment is breaking down. Next year the official Economic Summit moves to Germany. No doubt we will hear still more of how the world's richest peoples can go on getting still richer by carving off an even bigger slice of pie-in-the-sky. The Other Economic Summit will be there too, trying to bring the politicians back to reality. Andrew Hardy - - - RAG SCOOP Following Red Rag's front-page exposure of grave doubts surrounding the Community Alcoholism Teams, the latest and least publicised cats to emerge from West Berkshire District Health Authority's bag of 'Care in the Community' hiving-off tricks, look for a fuller airing of Reading's socially respectable drug problem in either or both of Reading's Other Newspapers. Hard on the heels of the CATs story in Rag's last issue - the first published report of WBDHA's Kindly-Volunteer-Counsellors-in-the-Caring- Comfort-of-Your-Own-Home 'response' to the community's most widespread and democratic addiction - the issue was raised in almost the same words from the public seats at the Community Health Council's 27 June meeting. CHC Chairperson Wally Gilbert head of Berkshire County Council's Social Services, fielded the hot potato adroitly ("You mean a white-wash?" - no Berk, our Wally, and he bikes to the meetings) and tossed it still smoking to the Mental Health Group with firm instructions to bring back the answers before the next public meeting on 25 July. Not content to hang about for four weeks, the Post and Chronic newshounds covering the meeting started asking pointed and well-prepared questions of their own in all the appropriate places. About all that emerged on the night was that the teams' volunteer counsellors had nearly finished their training (who they are and who is doing the training, how and where are still mysteries, as are details of medical backup and of course in-patient facilities, if any), and that the effort is apparently to be channelled through Berkshire Council on Alcoholism with BCA's Isobel Little tipped as most likely co-ordinator. Now that the embarrassed silence surrounding the whole subject has been broken, it looks as if addiction to beverage alcohol, its effects on the alcoholic, the family and the community at large, and the provision (or otherwise) of effective care and treatment may at last receive the public attention they deserve as one of Reading's and Berkshire's most acute health and social problems. Just remember whose Only Newspaper pipped the Post: Red Rag leads, media business follows. Meanwhile the Post's Sean Ryan has been shattering local burghers' smug complacency about the extent of heroin addiction in Berkshire with a soundly researched and un-hysterical series of articles. (Don't blame Sean for the pious fogeyism of his colleague Adam McCinlay in the Post's weakly freesheet spin-off the Standard. The Old Adam merely cribbed some Juicy bits from Sean's first article and grafted his own moral outrage onto them.) Post crime reporter Abbie Enock's 2 July front-pager on amphetamine sulphate was a good deal less helpful: Detective Sergeant Dave Klenczon's well-meaning invitation to "phone the drug squad in strict confidence" is likely to receive an underwhelming response from sceptical speed-freaks. Dave - - - GOING OUT mon 9th july Hex: "Steaming" by Nell Dunn. Comedy set in a Turkish bath. On till 14th. Mon-Thurs 8pm, Fri & Sat 6pm & 8.30 pm. £2.50-£4. SHP: Studio Theatre, "For Square Eyes Only" preview of Edinburgh Fringe musical with Ed Nauseam & the Repeats 7.30pm. £1.75 - £2. & Film: "Heat and Dust" 7.45pm. Oxford Playhouse: "Billy Liar" by Keith Waterhouse. £2.50 -£5. 0n till 14th. tues 10th SHP as last night, plus a literature talk with Peter Pegnall on Edward Albee's "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" 8pm. 50p. Oxford Apollo till 14th: "Wind in the Willows". £3.50 - £5.50. Tudor Arms: Gay Disco free. weds 11th SHP: "Heat and Dust" again. Hermit Club, Upper Deck, Duke St. Live music. thurs 12th SHP: Bracknell Film Society: "Georgia's Friends" 7.45p Benefit For Paul Metsers who's a singer-songwriter who's had his arm crushed in an accident on the M1 a few weeks back. He was to have done the gig. So Sara Gray & Ellie Elis (North American banjo & dulcimer); Richard Cox-Smith; Chronicle, will play at the Horse & Barge, Duke Street on Thursday at 8.15. Admission £1.50. All proceeds to Paul Metsers. Reading Folk Club do. Angie's Wokingham: Nick Lawrence and the Lost Guitars. fri 13th SHP: Bracknell Folk Fest. Contact SHP for details, I don't have enough time, room or energy to list it all here. OK so I'm lazy... Caribbean Club: Keya. Angle's: The Rootsie Tootsie Band. Tudor Arms; Gay Disco Free. sat 14th SHP: Bracknell Folk, same Cop-out as above applies. Hex: Free Midday Music. Eighth Mozart Summer Festival The Sylvan Players at Henley Perk, Fawley. For details of fest, contact Rupert Entertainments, 51a Christchurch Rd. Reading. Tel: 860505 or 581001. Caribbean: Hot Steel. Angie's Ruthless Blues with Johnny Mars. Central: Dance. sun 15th Butler Chatham St Free Jazz, i.e. you don't have to pay. Band Concert in the Forbury Gardens. 3pm. SHP: Folk Fest continues. Readifolk, Caversham Bridge Hotel: 8.15pm. Angie's Smoky Joe. Omission from Thurs: Central, Thursday Special. mon 16th SHP Film: "The Big Chill" 7.45pm. Hex: Till 21st: "Children of a Lesser God" 8pm. £2.50-£4. Lecture: "British Ceramics through, the Ages" Univ. Palmer Building 7.30pm. Complete with slide show... tues 17th SHP: Film as above and Peter Pegnall doing his stuff again this tine on Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway. Still only 50p. Tudor Arms: Gay Disco Free. weds 18th Hermit Club Upper Deck: Live music. SHP: "The Big Chill" again. thurs 19th SHP: Moonshine Video screening 7.45pm. Angle's: The Larry Miller Band. Central: Thursday Special. fri 20th SHP: Film: "The Right Stuff" 7.45pm. Tudor Arms: Gay Disco Free. Angie's: Dirty Syrangers. Caribbean: Star Rhapsody. sat 21st SHP: "The Right Stuff" again. & a recital of light opera proceeds to go to Park Opera Fund. 8pm. £2.25 inc. a glass of wine. Angie's: Reactors. Caribbean: Barbados Association Dance and beauty contest. With Hot Steel. Hex: Free lunchtime music with "Wild Oats" "Traditional British Isles Music humorously presented" Central: Dance. sun 22nd Butler Chatham St Jazz, free. Angie's E.Q. Band Concert in the Forbury Gardens. 3pm. Hex closed till 26th August, Box office closed from 30th July till 5th August. SHP: Film as above. mon 23rd SHP: Film, as abive. tues 24th Tudor Arms Gay Disco; Free. SHP: "The Merry Wives of Windsor". 7.30pm. £2 -£2.50. - - - SOME VERY INTERESTING BITS... Red Rag is Reading's only newspaper and has appeared free and fortnightly since 1979. The current press run is 1500. The last issue was only 4 pages long but still cost about £35-40. A 12 page issue would cost over £100. Thanks to those people who sent money. However we need more. If possible, please fill out a standing order form available from the Red Rag box at Acorn or ring one of the numbers on the front cover. The Rag is produced by a vacillating, nebulous collective. We welcome articles, news and help. When sending contributions, they should reach the Rag before the copy deadline - normally a Thursday - and if possible should be typed, single spaced, to a width of 12cm, and signed in some way. There should be some way of contacting the writer to discuss possible changes. Please send copy to Box 79, Acorn Bookshop, 17 Chatham St, Reading. Red Rag is not affiliated to any party and is nothing to do with the University. We are all amateurs and donate our time free. About 40 people are needed at various stages to produce the Rag - many of them do not know or have ever met each other. Articles come from many sources mainly outside the collective and do not necessarily reflect the views of those people who produce it. We print all we receive providing that it is not racist, sexist nor supportive of oppressive religions. Money is always a constraint and we often have to hold articles over or reduce them in length because of lack of space, but always in consultation with the writer. General decisions about running the Rag are taken by the collective meeting, open to all, the next one being at 39 Coventry Rd on Sunday 15 July. - - - EVENTS mon 9th July Women's Discussion Group. 'Earning a living' Women's Centre, Old Shire Hall, 8 pm. Reading Cycle Campaign. Monthly meeting, UB Cycles, London Street, 8 pm. Pangbourne Peace Group Planning meeting for autumn. 1 Short Street, Pangbourne, 8 pm. Berks Anti-Nuclear Campaign (BANC)- Leaflet planning meeting, 42 Gosbrook Road, Caversham, 8 pm. tues 10th Reading Bahais 'Beyond disarmament': talk on arms control by Ms J. Osborne of American League of Women Voters. BANC General meeting with Bill Mover of People to People plus discussion on local campaign issues. Venue??? weds 11th VeggieDining collective meeting. Everyone interested in planning, cooking, helping, playing music, etc. (not just this week), be there! Acorn Bookshop, 8 pm. thurs 12th - Nothing doing (?): go fly a kite. fri 13th (We're not superstitious) 20th Century Arts Public meeting 'Community Arts for Reading' with film 'Somewhere in Hackney'. Reading Centre for the Unwaged, 4-6 East St. 7.30 for 6 pm. Creche facilities. Peace Pledge Union Weekend summer camp (13 to 15), Leighton Park School, Pepper Lane (off Shinfield Road). Camping for members only; all welcome during the day for workshops, actions, etc. Saturday afternoon, visit to ROF Burghfield with New Games and picnic. Ring Bridge on 37 4532 for details. VeggieDining: Stuff yourself in aid of Red Rag! RR Benefit night, Fairview Community Centre, George St., 7.30 for 8 pm. Tickets from Acorn, 17 Chatham St., £2 (£1.50 unwaged). sat 14th Veteran Transport Rally, Ward's Farm, Woodcote from 10 am. Things that go puff and toot and honk and play Puppet on a String for hours and hours: huge fun! Tomorrow too. Morning Star Garden Party (if you didn't get invited to Buckingham Palace again this year...) Drinks, stalls, games, pottery. St Michaels Cottage, Routh Lane, Tilehurst. 6.30-10 pm. Silent Vigil for Peace outside St Mary's Church, The Butts, 10 am - 4 pm. West Reading CND Jumble Sale, St Mary's Centre, Chain St, 2-4 pm. Jumble to Jim Showier, 587182. Wokingham Peace Group Bring 'n buy, Cheese 'n wine. 47 Sarum Crescent, Wokingham, 12 - 2.30. Peace Pledge Union Picnic at ROF Burghfield: see Friday 13. sun 15th Red Rag collective meeting. Come along and contribute profound ideas, or be really useful and offer to do something. Be a part of Reading's Only (and Most Improbable) Newspaper. 29 Coventry Road, Newtown, 4 pm. mon 16th Support the miners: Public rally with speakers. Katesgrove Primary School, Dorothy Street, 7.30 pm. (A rally without speakers - now that would really be something!) Lecture: British ceramics through the ages. Palmer Building, University, Whiteknights, 7.30. Reading Birth Centre (support group for pregnant women). Meeting, 25 Elm Park Road, 12 noon. Bring a dish. Lecture 'Appropriate technology for self-reliant development' by George-McRobie of Intermediate Technology Development Group (author of Small is Possible). Wokingham Town Hall, 7.45, 50p admission. Traidcraft food and crafts on sale. thurs 19th Red Rag: Copy deadline and editorial meeting to sort out who does what when for the next issue. Details from and offers of help to Bridget, 37 4532. fri 20th - another of those ho-hum days again, apparently. sat 21st Apollo Youth Club Cultural Week (to July 28). This year's theme: 'Our history before slavery'. No more details yet - phone 751242. Red Rag Production. Details from Bridge, 37 4532. sun 22nd Berks Environmental Association Guided tour of Newbury, talk on the Kennet and Avon Canal, then back to Reading by canal. Details: Ms D M Watts, 871991. Sounds like fun. Railfair 84. Railway Site, Hithercroft Road, Wallingford from 11 Coley Nursery: Open 2.30 - 6 pm. Off Wenseley Road. Red Rag: Folding and labelling, Acorn Bookshop, 17 Chatham Street from 11. Help always wanted - social event of the year. mon 24th Wokingham Peace Group Meeting vith Ecology Party speaker. Woke Torn Hall, 8 pm. tues 24th Miners Support Group Benefit concert and raffle, TU Club, Kinster Street. So far as we know the club still has a male-only membership policy - see story elsewhere in this issue. Who you support - miners or women - and how you make your feelings known is your choice, not ours. Advance Warning Birth Centre Supporters Summer picnic - everyone welcome. Bring music, ideas for New Games and juggling equipment, a dish to share and drink. From noon, phone 65648, 61330 or 584191 for location. VeggieDining Red Rag Benefit Anyone interested in helping, please contact Mike or Tracey on 588459. Maybe we could charge an extra 50p per ticket? Venue will be Fairview as usual, help needed with food and music. Late Addition: New Games, Sunday 15th, 1:30, Palmer Park Adventure Playground. Bring imagination. - - - SMALL AD ON ITS OWN 5'6" avocado free to good home. Needs light. Can be outside in summer. 665432. - - - CRUISING On 25 June, Cruise left Greenham for the second time. Embarrassing enough that one of the vehicles in the cruise convoy broke down on its first outing (apparently the clutch broke because the small hill outside the main gate was too much for a huge missile carrier designed for large American roads) and has now put Cruise's NATO operational pass into jeopardy. More laughable is the escort for these huge vehicles. Armoured trucks may be thought appropriate but in fact they are escorted by a posse of jogging MOD policemen. Technology ?! Anna K - - - REGULAR EVENTS Juggling workshop: Palmer Park, nr Adventure Playground. Every weekday 7pm. Bring something to juggle with. Contact Pete for further info, 'phone 67430 Photography: sessions every Tuesday (10-12, 1-3) at Centre for the Jobfree, East St Housing and Welfare Rights: Thursday evening, Community House, Cumberland Rd. Reading Gay Switchboard: Tues & Fri, 8-10pm. 597269 Mini-Market: Thurs 9-1, St Mary's House, Chain St Women's Centre: open Tues 10-2, Wed 10-2, Sat 11-5. All women and kids welcome. Pregnancy testing Tues 7-9, bring urine sample from first pee of the day. Incest Survivors Group: meets regularly. Write c/o Rape Crisis Line, 17 Chatham St, for details. Anarchists: meet every Monday. Details via Box 19, Acorn Bookshop. Autonomists contact via the anarchists. Peace Pledge Union: meets monthly, always active. Contact 588459,868384, or Box 10, Acorn. Ecology Party: meets 1st and 3rd Hon of mouth at 25 de Beauvoir Rd and 38 Long Barn Lane respectively. Contact Maria 663195. Socialist Workers' Party: meet every Weds, Red Lion, Southampton St, 8pm. Labour History Group: meets monthly at Red Lion. Contact Breda 584558 or Mike 665478 for details. Vegans: 1st Sun of month. 1 Orrin Close, Tilehurst at 2pm. Contact Liz and Steve Shiner 21651 Women's Peace Group: 1st Mon of month at Women's Centre. Contact Rheinhild 662873. Amnesty: 2nd Thurs of month. St Mary's Centre, Chain St. Contact Jean 472598. History of Reading Soc: 3rd Tubs of month, Abbey Gateway Berks Humanists: meet 2nd Fri of month Oct-May at 8pm. Friends' Meeting House, Church St. Details Crowthorne 774871. Cyclists Touring Club: outings Sun 9.15 from Caversham Bridge or Henley. Richard 50949 Wednesday is Women's Day at Centre for the Jobfree, East St. Coffee, advise, courses, etc, from 10.30. Silkscreen Workshops: at Newtown Community House, 117 Cumberland Rd. Details Clive 662302 Cruelty-free toiletries: market stall every Sat behind Tescos, Butts Centre. National Council for Civil Liberties: 2nd Mon of month. St Mary's Centre, Chain St. Contact Paul 861582. Reading Cycle Campaign: meets monthly at the Rising Sun, 1st Mon of month. For details ring 483181 or 64667. Reading Birth Centre: 3rd Tues of month for food and chat. Ring 61330 for venue. Reading Organisation for Animal Rights (ROAR): 1st Tues of month at The Crown, Crown St. Contact Alan 477790. Reading Recreation Art Centres: Painting for Pleasure at Town Hall. Mon 7-9, Tues 10-12. Details 55911 or 861289. Men's Group: meets weekly. For dates and venues contact Box 28 c/o Acorn Bookshop. Gaysoc, Mondays in University Term, 8pm, Council Room, Students Union, Whiteknights campus. Miners Support Committee: meets every Thursday, 7-30pm, TGWU Office, 36 King's Road. Ring Reading 590311 for details. - - - OFF BEAT The Beating Time instrumental workshop that 'everyone' wanted to see continue after the Festival was there for anyone who wanted every Friday at RCU: after the first session nobody wanted, so we all congratulated ourselves - sound of one hand clapping - on a huge success, pasted cancelled stickers over the posters in the best Reading music-business tradition and went home. Maybe September - if there is a real demand. (Meanwhile the vocal workshop flourishes: some you win, some you lose and some just fade away...) Dave - - - WHOSE ART? A lot of lip service has been paid in recent years to the idea that 'art' should be taken out of the galleries, the opera houses, the colleges, the hands of administrators with 'good taste', (etc., etc.) and put firmly back into the community. A lot of lip service, and little or no action, in Reading as in many other places. A public meeting is being held on Friday 13 July at Reading Centre for the Unemployed, 4-6 East Street, to see how the idea can be put into action. There's no hard and fast rules been agreed among the people who are organising the meeting about how this can and should be done. We simply share a belief that things commonly known as 'art' mean next to nothing to most of us. We know that as members of specific communities in the area the possibilities open to us to produce things for ourselves and within our communities are limited. There's no need for this to go on. There's cash available if we fight for it and plenty of people already working in communities who could use it for specific projects - projects which mean something to the communities involved and are fun to produce. Projects which change the way we look at our shared environment and the way the environment looks at itself. All we're suggesting at the moment is that you bring your ideas to the meeting and we can all work out how best to co-ordinate or common desire - to take back some control over our environment, our communities, our lives, through producing and living our own culture. Arts administrators and local government officials aren't in a position to decide on our culture, but if we set up projects and demonstrate a commitment to see them through they just may loosen the purse-strings if asked. Elsewhere in the country kids are designing and painting murals to cover the walls of their schools; community festivals are being run by and for the communities involved; local film and video groups are writing, producing and showing their own films; groups are creating their own vocabularies and contexts for drama; they're setting up places where people can dance and learn at the same time; people are writing, printing, making music and performing it.... They're doing what they want and enjoying it, so why not here? If you have an answer to the question 'Why not?' then we want you along as well. There are pitfalls, we know. No one wants yet another organisation that says a lot and does nothing - half a dozen people speaking for communities that they have no right to speak for, ideologues who get a buzz our of feeling that they are 'liberating' the world. What we want is co-ordinated action through specific projects. Doing things will bind communities together, and the consequences of that are limitless! Quentin 20th Century Arts' first public meeting will be held at the Centre for the Unemployed, 4-6 East Street, on Friday 13 July, 7.30 for 8 pm. See 'Events' for details. - - - ADS Wanted: double buggy to borrow or buy. 61330. Wanted: books on pregnancy, birth, parenting, etc. Anyone who has them and would like to donate them to the Birth Centre for our library, ring 584191. We'd be very grateful. Wanted: double mattress in reasonable condition, cheap or free. 588459. As above, double mattress wanted. 669154. Free - armchair brown v.v. comfy, but rather big. 662302. - - - CITIZEN CAIN Private Health: Dunedin Clinic in Reading (which is just expanding by 50%) remains the only private hospital in the West Berks area. But the Health Authority is making over half-a-million a year from private beds, mainly in the Royal Berks. Copped: Thames Valley Police have admitted that quite a few of their vans are up north picketing power stations and things. Which may explain why there are so many uniformed cops sulking about in Reading in vans hired from Bratts and other local entrepreneurs. Although that does raise the question as to whether the Thames Valley police vans in the mining areas are full of Thames Valley policemen or are being used as cover by less civilian forces. Silicon View: "ICL's general policy direction seems to be towards the rather parasitic (and uncertain?) approach of other, smaller companies: buying, re-packaging and selling someone else's work": from a very disturbing Alternative Report 1984 produced by the ICL Joint Union Committee, explaining the transfer of Michael Edwardes and the techniques that cost BL 100,000 jobs to what was once supposed to be Britain's premier company. Edwardes bytes? Close Shave: Less dramatic is a sad little admission from the Factory Manager at Gillette's that at least 50 jobs will go there during the second half of 1985. His own job will go before then as part of the takeover of Gillette's Reading business. Evictions: The Tory Government is very keen about the "right to buy" for anybody renting a home (so long as it's in the public sector). Which is why they are pushing through a Housing and Building Control Bill expanding this right to caretakers, teachers and others living in tied County Council accommodation. Their enthusiasm is not shared by the Tories on Berkshire County Council, who pushed through against Labour opposition a decision to give notice to quit to all their tenants so that they would not be able to take up Mrs Thatcher's munificent offer. They'd be made homeless before the Bill got the Royal assent. Scaremongering Special: "Auckland's Chief Dental Officer Finds Cases of Unsightly Mottling" : the headline of a leaflet sent to members of the local Health Authority by the Berkshire Pure Water Society in defence of our bodily fluids (remember Dr Strangelove?) against the menace of fluoridation. - - - P.P.U. Report of meeting - 4.7.84 Our latest meeting was last Wednesday: despite a disappointing turn-out of just 6, we did manage to get through quite a bit. Forthcoming events discussed included the PPU summer camp at Leighton Park School on July 13-15 and activities for Hiroshima Day (6 August). We also floated the idea of rekindling the 'Saturday lunchtime in town' presence. On July 30 and 31 the 'On the road' Peace Van will be in Reading (the Centre for the Jobfree and somewhere in tne town centre). A major item on the agenda was the planned visit to Boscombe Down on July 29. Boscombe Down Peace Camp was established on June 16 and is a mixed sex camp, at present in dire need of support. Boscombe, near Salisbury, is a USAF reserve base and could be used for cruise missiles in an 'emergency'. Our visit on July 29 is to give the campers a concrete expression of our support: we intend to have our monthly meeting there, bring them some food and spend the day. Transport will leave the Forbury Gardens at 10.45am on that Sunday (meet by the pond), and return around 5pm. Call John 483183 or Bridget 374532 as soon as possible if you want to go. Paul Jardine - - - (Paid Advertisement) Futons Cotton filed HANDMADE MATTRESSES Can be rolled up during the day & either stored or used as seating Ideal for spare room, bedsits or as a space-saver Made in a range of colours, all cotton Large single £60 double £75 Other sizes on request For further details ring Rdg 65648 - - - ACORN'S BIT Reading's community bookshop has been running for nearly 8 years now, through many different phases. The current phase involves more work than ever and only 2 full-time workers. So... Job Advert Acorn needs another full-time worker to work collectively with the 2 current workers, including decision-making, responsibility for the premises and all that, and to do some (or all) of the following: - serving customers - accounts & VAT - library supply - displays - choosing & ordering new stock alongside day-to-day bookselling & maintenance of stock & premises, looking after badges, posters & other non-book stock - stalls - badge-making - photocopying, electrostencil cutting, artwork preparation, duplicating & general resources - printing This list is inevitably incomplete, but gives an idea of what we do. Low wages, high commitment but can be a lot of fun. We also rely to some extent on a pool of 'helpers' which is suffering from summer drought. That involves being available to help out informally to stretch the overstretched workforce. Get in touch if you're interested in 'helping' of 'working'. Acorn Bookshop, 17 Chatham St, Reading 584425 Acorn Bookshop is an Equal Opportunities Employer!! - - - $Id: //info.ravenbrook.com/user/ndl/readings-only-newspaper/issue/1984/1984-07-08.txt#5 $