Philip Pearson

Today (Monday) ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder called on world leaders “to meet again within months to meet the expectation of the world’s people and conclude such a treaty. We need a binding agreement that delivers a habitable planet, decent work, binding emissions reductions and financial support for the most vulnerable.”

The weekend papers were full of climate heroes and villains. What I remember of the last two days is the sense of increasing disorientation, anxiety, loss of control, anger (made worse by bumping into Nick Griffin). Where we once felt engaged in a UN process, however tenuously at times, we now felt enraged. An abiding memory is of human swarms in the scented wake of political leaders. Where are they going now? And Why?

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• Stumbling and Mumbling: Fiscal squeezes, class war & growth
  Chris Dillow doubts that cutting spending will boost growth

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• Ireland’s budget amounts to a charter of exploitation that puts very deep blue water between the government and its people
  The General Secretary of our Irish sister organisation writes for Progress

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Sharan Burrow

World leaders here in Copenhagen can today make history and give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance at a stable future. Working people around the world and their families are watching. They are depending on you to commit to a  binding agreement that delivers a habitable planet, decent work and financial support for the most vulnerable; an historic legacy, right here, today in Copenhagen.

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Philip Pearson

Our delegation were emailed at 3am this morning with the key points of last night’s top-level talks. Our key text on Just Transition stays in! But, as President Obama and other leaders fly in to make their final offers, the unfinished UN process will, we fear, give way to a political decision now being drafted.

In the UN centre, the Obama magic has arrived. Crowds mass around TVs outside the hall. Upright and direct, he says:

“Our ability to take collective action is in doubt, right now the conference is in the balance. We come here not to talk but to act.”

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• Tobin tax update: how momentum is building for a Financial Transactions Tax
  Oxfam’s Duncan Green on the growing FTT campaign

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Philip Pearson

Heads of state are now speaking in plenary sessions with limited public access. Our delegation has a handful of tickets to get in. Gordon Brown used his contribution to urge delegates to “make the essential possible”, the challenge of true statesmanship. He outlined the framework of such an agreement:

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Philip Pearson

Front page of today’s Financial Times shows the police holding back protesters dressed as clowns outside the conference centre. But the clowns can be happy – it feels as if they are running the show.

The crass handling of the Observer community. Effectively shutting us out physically and, it feels, politically. Yesterday, we couldn’t even get access to meet our own DECC Minister, despite walking miles in the bitter cold (no metro, there’s an NGO demo). Midnight, we learn that the ITUC has a nine-badge allocation for today and tomorrow. Back to the centre by 8 – it’s even colder after heavy snow. Made to queue again, in the open. But the phone rings and we are on to meet the UK at 1pm today!

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Richard Exell

Yesterday’s figures capped was another month of mixed results. Once again, youth unemployment defied the pessimists and failed to pass the one million mark, the claimant count again showed signs of improvement, the number of people in employment rose and there was a tiny increase in vacancies. Other figures still look gloomy, especially for long-term and youth unemployment and there are now more than one million workers in involuntary part-time employment and a third of all temporary workers would prefer a permanent job.

Overall, the employment and unemployment figures may have begun to get worse at a slower rate but it is still too early to say that they are getting better; I feel a quotation from Churchill coming on…

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

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Philip Pearson

Driving snows, helicopters seem everywhere, either bringing in heads of state or monitoring demos, with FoE leading a blockade of the conference, we hear, because, they are denied all access to the conference. 

The situation is quite gloomy. We have never been so far apart so near the deadline. Rumours abound - that our PM has been in telephone conference with France, Germany and Sweden to unblock the conference.

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