THE ALTERNATIVE

Before I go to Berlin tomorrow, I'd like to invite you all to spend next Saturday with me, my wife, several of our friends and colleagues and hundreds of thousands of other people in the Hyde Park area of London.



This manifesto neatly sums up why we'll be there:

We stand for:

* The opportunity for everyone to access work, safely and for fair reward.
* Good jobs that give people fulfilment and a chance to develop.
* More green jobs and a more sustainable economy.
* Quality public services, available to everyone that needs them.
* A vibrant and democratic civil society, respecting human rights.

We won’t stand for:

* People being exploited at work, union members or not.
* Unfair employment practices and bad political decisions that encourage them.
* Greed, tax dodging and speculation that damage the productive economy.
* Inequality that traps people in poverty, debt and drudgery.
* Business models based on a race to the bottom on standards.

And as internationalists, we hold to these principles for people in other countries, as much as we do for those at home.

These are the foundations on which even the most basic civil society must stand, but they are being chipped away (or, in many cases, dynamited to the ground). So, sociable types that we are, we look forward to meeting you, you and definitely you there next Saturday.