Trade Union Education at Ruskin College

Saw this in Writer's Guild newsletter:

Ruskin College in Oxford has announced its new international degree programmes for trade unionists. These will tackle the challenges of globalisation for labour movements, especially union renewal, and are aimed primarily at young activists and officers.

The BA in International Labour and Trade Union Studies is at undergraduate level, and builds on existing Ruskin courses for trade unionists which already range from basic skills levels upwards.

The postgraduate MA in International Labour and Trade Union Studies is aimed at the increasing numbers of graduate (and equivalent) union activists and officers and international specialists as well as those from NGOs and voluntary organisations working in the field.

Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC says: “Trade unionism needs to be global if it’s going to tackle issues like trade, aid and debt; transnational corporations and migrant workers. Ruskin has always been internationalist, preparing generations of trade union officers and activists from around the world. Now we need a new generation of young men and especially women, to take up the challenge, acquire the knowledge and develop the skills appropriate to the new globalisation of work. And these new programmes are just what they need.”

See www.ruskin.ac.uk for full details.

Budapest Taxi

My third visit to Budapest few days ago was the shortest one so far, and this time I stayed what some locals call one of the gipsy areas, 8th district. My land lady told me to eat at Kaltenberg, “cheap, gypsy music and friendly” she said. I didn’t manage to go there in the end. But within few moments on my first walkabout I gave joyful and playful children on the street 15 forint (5 pence) to “call our mother”, they said. They had “I’m not begging smile” on their faces, but “share the fortunes of the world, sir”, on their faces. On Monday morning, shortly after I had left for town, without a jacket or an umbrella, the sky opened and it rained until I was wet, through and through. I took cover few times as I was finding my way, but eventually returned home to change. But on my last stop where I took cover by a build-over garden, with a wooden made roof and tree hanging on to it, I saw a group of ca. 20 people, and one can tell gypsies from the rest of the world in a place like this. A lady came to me with a plastic bag she had cut in the middle, and she put it over my head and shoulder. How nice that was.

This time I also wanted to go outside of Budapest for a bit, and see a place that is famous for nothing. The city Szolnok. So my return to London was, a train, a taxi, a flight, another flight, a train, and then bus 27 from Paddington which in less than five minutes stops right in front of my house. But Hotel Tisza, on the Tisza-riverside, is the most peaceful and elegant hotel I´ve been in, and I do not like hotels. They have a Turkeys bathhouse, which makes a good morning a good morning, and the dining area, which is more like a hall with two separate lounges on left and right hand side, was empty when I arrived to have my included breakfast. I could hear myself swallow.

The taxi driver, perhaps in his late 50´s, spoke about 15 words in English and around 30 German words. At least he spoke more German than me. But strange how taxi-prices go down as you move outside of the train station, the first one who offered me a taxi said it was 9000 forint to the airport, the next one 7000, and outside I met the one who said 5000, in fact 6000 if you are talking about the International one. So there we go, but it is as the drivers outside know what the drivers inside are offering.

My driver had a scare on his lip, well shaven and all around a cool guy, he seemed a nice one, but soon he was pushed a bit aside by a small red fiat, onto a slow lane, and then he started to use the English words. Arabs he said, then mafia, then Nigerians, then mafia again, and then Russians.

He punched his fist into the air and said “no intelligencia”, “use hand, no head”, he said.

True. Someone had said that the crimes scene could be a lot worse in Hungary and in many other east European places if the crooks would use there head a bit more. He talked quite a bit on the way, but mostly in Hungarian, I think. When we hit the highway he said, “Niki Louda”, then there was silence until we arrived again into more traffic.

At the airport the price had come to 6500 forint, close to 30 Euros, and I went inside to the bankomat to withdraw some forint. “Ich warte”, he said, and when I returned outside he was in a heated conversation with a quiet policeman, or say, delivering a monologue to the policeman who seemed to listen to him as he were telling him how he should kick the crook’s ass. A friendly noon, friendly departure, it almost compensated for the architectural mistake that Ferihegy airport is. Odd when a nice design can function so mysteriously frosty, if it is in a wrong place.