News round-up: BBC bloggers wind up their campaign and NUJ website revamp July 17, 2007
Posted by rosieniven in Israel boycott, NUJ.trackback
Looks like BBC journalists calling for a ballot of NUJ members about the Israel “boycott” motion have written their last blog post for now.
They have decided to scale down their campaign in the light of the NEC’s decision not to press ahead with calls for a boycott.
In the post, Rory Cellan-Jones applauds the NEC’s decision and the role of general secretary Jeremy Dear in bringing the saga to a close. He also backed the union’s drive to encourage the 32 members who resigned their membership following the boycot motion to rejoin the union.
He adds:
“Because this is just the first chapter in what should become a campaign to reform the NUJ. Next year’s ADM is likely to feature another 200 or so motions on everything from global warming to nuclear power to Venezuela – more issues which most of us feel are for individuals to care about, rather than for NUJ posturing.
Most of us are too busy to spend time at branch meetings, but let’s try to make the effort to ensure that the people elected to represent us at ADM concentrate on issues that matter to us.”
See the full post here
Meanwhile, I can reveal that the union is working on a new website, which should be unveiled later this month. They’ve ditched the green in favour of maroon and Jeremy Dear gets his own blog. Watch this space for more details…
While that’s largely good news, it’s very hard not to be incredibly irritated by the self-important posturing of these people. Translation: “We find it difficult not to exaggerate the importance of the fact that we disagreed with some other people in the NUJ, so we will continue to inflate it as a point of principle. We know for a fact that most other people in the NUJ are stupid, and that they will bombard next year’s ADM with motions we consider irrelevant. Although we’ve spent a lot of time complaining about this, we’ve now decided we are in fact too busy to participate in union affairs, so we’ll continue to criticise everyone who does make the time. Until the next time we object to something, when we won’t be too busy to tell the world how stupid and useless the NUJ is.”
Absolutely astonishing arrogance and lack of any self-awareness.