Now -read the book!

Here is a link to my memoirs which, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can purchase online at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. (William Morris - A Dream of John Ball)

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Prentis' twitter shame

http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/twittering-about-unison-general.html?m=1

I've been blogging awhile and have been struck that the post above attracted the most comments I think any of my posts ever have.

‎In that post I alleged that the campaign to elect Dave Prentis to carry on as General Secretary of UNISON appeared to have obtained a sudden influx of slightly odd twitter followers.

As you can see (if you can be bothered) this provoked a tirade from an anonymous Prentis supporter who demanded that I ask Prentis, straightforwardly, whether his campaign had been purchasing "twitter followers".

If you have the time to follow my twitter feed you'll see that this question has been asked more than once.

It hasn't been answered.

Dave Prentis was originally elected (and twice re-elected) with the support of impressive activists in our Union.

I wasn't one of them.

I didn't support him.

But I know when I'm outgunned.

And I was.

This time the best of Dave's former supporters either abstained or backed other candidates.

He was left with the backing of the stupid and the arrogant (a combination which has proven toxic in at least one case).

Whoever was running the twitter operation clearly did something to attract followers who repeatedly refuse to respond to tweets asking them why they followed @electprentis.

For that matter @electprentis also refuses to respond to repeated questions about how he obtained these followers.

You have to ask yourself - as a UNISON member - do you want a General Secretary with such poor judgement that he would entrust his re-election campaign to people who will make such a dog's breakfast of twitter?

It's like the question mark that is raised over the character of an individual prepared to perpetuate a false claim of support for his candidacy from the Labour Leader by failing to delete a tweet from that selfsame twitter feed.

Oh Dave. Who did you leave running your campaign? What on earth are you going to do about their evident inadequacy?

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.

No comments: