'Take us with you, Scotland' say thousands in North of England

BBC Trending

This map, created in 2014, has been widely shared again

Thousands of people in the North of England have been using the hashtag "take us with you Scotland" to express their upset about the result of last week's general election, and the Scottish nationalists are welcoming this English minority with open arms.

Since last Thursday's general election in Britain the phrase "take us with you Scotland" has been used more than 24,000 times. Cities in the North of England have traditionally been a stronghold of the Labour party who retained many of them in the recent vote, but won 232 seats overall, 26 fewer seats than they won in 2010. Voters in the region also returned Conservative MPs - including Chancellor George Osborne who is today setting out a plan for greater devolution to northern cities. For obvious reasons, the left-leaning Scottish National Party didn't stand in the region - but won nearly all the seats in Scotland.

On Sunday afternoon left-leaning voters in Yorkshire and Lancashire started to use the hashtag to express their upset at this situation. "#TakeUsWithYouScotland genuinely beginning to wonder if the North of England becoming a part of Scotland would be better for us, I really am" tweeted Aaron Miller from Yorkshire. Some cracked more jokes under the tag after the North West Motorway Police account, which gives traffic updates, announced that they had "picked up a pedestrian on the M62 who was trying to walk to Scotland".

After the initial spike of jokes on Sunday evening, the hashtag really took off when users start to mobilise around a year old petition on change.org, which is titled "allow the north of England to secede from the UK & join Scotland". The petition's creator, a Sheffield resident who calls himself "Stu Dent", set it up to coincide with last year's Scottish independence referendum. A map created by Dent imagining the boundary of a "Scotland plus the north" was also widely shared.

Dent runs the Twitter account Hunters Bar, named after an area of southwest Sheffield which is very popular with students and which also happens to sit on the edge of the Sheffield Hallam constituency - represented by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg. Despite having thousands of followers on Twitter, when Dent first posted his map last year, the image was shared less than 100 times - but in the past week it's been retweeted by thousands.

Dent told BBC Trending that he was surprised at how popular his petition had become. "In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have been," he said. "There is a huge frustration in parts of the UK about the things that have happened since 2010."

"I think people need a place to go where they can say 'not in my name! This is not the England I want'," he added.

Thousands of people in the North of England have been petitioning for the region to be allowed to join Scotland

So why has the trend grown so big now? The election results are clearly one factor, but there may be another: the power of the Scottish Nationalists on Twitter and their ability to influence the discussion on the platform. What started as a post-election joke in the North of England was quickly embraced by the so-called "Cyber Nats" and they were able to push the image and petition up the Twitter trending list.

This tweet was retweeted 450 times and favourited more than 400 times by both Scottish and English users

More than 12,000 people from Scotland and Northern England have signed the petition and the map has now been retweeted more than 3,000 times. The SNP's social media strategist Ross Colquhoun expressed the party's mood about the hashtag best, in a post which was shared more than 500 times. "2014: #LetsStayTogether 2015: #TakeUsWithYouScotland What a difference a year makes" he tweeted.

The Curse of KP - Kevin Pietersen

Simon Barnes in Cricinfo

There will be a great deal of analysis of England's performance at the World Cup and their consequent failure to reach the knockout stage after their defeat by Bangladesh. Most of it will be concerned with England's traditional shortcomings in 50-over cricket.

People will point out that England are hopelessly out of date, still stuck in the approach they used when they played ODIs with a red ball - and it was a bit rusty then. They will talk about Joe Root and Ian Bell scoring 24 runs off 38 balls as a classic example of this fuddy-duddiness, and they will be right.

They will speak about English snobbery, the hierarchical way they view the various forms of cricket, with ODIs as the poor relation to Test cricket - even though this overlooks the fact that over the last 18 months England have been almost equally poor in Test matches.

That's not a cheap shot. England's limitations in limited-overs cricket don't matter. The real issue is that the team is broken. Broken in all the forms in which it appears. Shattered. Traumatised. Wrecked. Destroyed. And apparently incapable of healing itself.

The problems with 50-over cricket are what scientists would call the proximate cause of this disaster. If England want to set things aright, they must look to the ultimate cause.

That means checking out the Curse of the Bambino. This is a baseball story: it tells of the problems that affected the Boston Red Sox after they traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. They failed to win the World Series again until 2004: a barren patch of 86 years.

England are suffering from the Curse of KP: and nearly a year after his sacking the team in all its forms is worse off than ever. Against Bangladesh the two witless run-outs, the wading-through-treacle batting, and the tendency for wickets to fall in clusters showed a deeper malaise than their inability to get their heads around a different format of cricket.

How did it begin? I watched England when they were - briefly - at the very peak of the Test match rankings. I watched them destroy Australia in Australia, I watched them hammer India in India, and in both these efforts, Kevin Pietersen was at the heart of it.

England are the team that died of a joke. It's a fact that tyrants and other kinds of egomaniac hate jokes. They don't understand them - apart from someone slipping on a banana skin and breaking his neck. It follows that jokes are often the most powerful weapons against such people.

The parody Twitter account KPGenius caused deep pain to Pietersen. It follows that it gave deep delight to people in the England team who found Pietersen difficult to deal with. The subversive giggling created a deep fissure through the team. When you have such a geology it doesn't take much to create a major landslide.

And that's what happened when England went to Australia in 2013 still fancying themselves a great cricket team. Mitchell Johnson's ferocious bowling acted like a ton of dynamite on that fault line and the team collapsed. A team of talented players found that they could do no right. It was a tour punctuated by the departure of cricketers who could take no more, and it was followed by that of coaches who felt the same.

This was bad enough, but in seeking a cure, England made it far worse. They made a great to-do of sacking Pietersen and setting up his beleaguered captain, Alastair Cook, as a moral rallying point for an England relaunch. This role was too much for Cook and the traumatised team he was leading.

Cook's own form fell away and he was replaced as one-day captain just before the World Cup. They brought in Eoin Morgan instead - not a bad plan, except that Morgan can't buy a run himself, looks like a busted flush in all forms of cricket, and in the decisive match against Bangladesh was out third ball for nought.

All this after England had shunted the Ashes series around - itself a disastrous decision - to give themselves a full winter of white-ball cricket to get ready for this tournament. And just to add another pint of bat's blood to this witch's brew, the incoming chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Colin Graves, has just suggested that there was a way open for Pietersen's return.

Either Graves is stupid or he is deliberately destabilising Cook, Paul Downton, chief exec of the ECB, and the head coach, Peter Moores, all at once. No other interpretation is possible. Certainly it did a grand job of upsetting an already troubled team on the eve of the crucial match of the World Cup.

So the Curse of KP continues. The result is a team in mental paralysis. I remember Steve Davis, the great snooker player, telling me: "It's all right to miss a ball. You're entitled to miss a ball. It's when you start thinking wrong that you're in trouble."

And that's England. They have been thinking wrong ever since Johnson dynamited the fissure and caused England's collapse. The executive, the coaches, the captains, the players: all incapable of thinking straight in the desperately difficult times that began with defeat at the hands of Australia and continue to this day.

England can't play one-day cricket very well, but that's old news. The real problem is that right now they can't play any kind of cricket. I know they beat India in the Test matches last summer, but India, notoriously poor travellers, went out of their way to help them.

This defeat by Bangladesh, this untimely and undignified exit from the World Cup is not a new problem, nor is it a pure cricketing matter. It's the logical result of trauma. Bangladesh were good enough to prey on England's weakness and doubt, and take a famous victory.

The Curse of KP strikes again. Never mind, perhaps England will win the World Cup in 86 years' time.

Cricket - It's not the plan, stupid: it's the performance.

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

Merely calling for the heads of Cook and Moores isn't going to solve England's ODI problems © Getty Images

That the England hierarchy wasn't sure, even last week, who should captain them at the World Cup is seen as a terrible lack of planning. You know the kind of critique: problems have been obvious for a long time, need for long-term thinking, absence of a strategic plan, last-minute wobbles…

The consensus, sadly, is wrong and misleading. Planning has very little to do with it. It usually doesn't. The problem isn't bad planning but bad performances. No plan, however good in principle, can survive consistent failure. The fans and the media, understandably, demand change. Indeed, it is not good plans that lead to good performances but good performances that make plans look good. So we have the causality back to front: we talk about the consequences believing them to be the cause. After all, bad teams have plans, too. As Mike Tyson said in a moment of wisdom, "Everyone's got a plan, and then they get punched on the mouth."

Both sides - management and media - are complicit in what is essentially a kind of fraud: the myth of the plan. My television set is always at risk of having heavy objects thrown at it when coaches emerge after a defeat with the message: "Our plans were good, but we just didn't execute them well." (I don't think much more of the alternative: "We need to tweak our plans a little bit.") Always, this is said with the conviction that part a) "the plan" and part b) "the execution" were of roughly equal value and significance. In fact, as every aspiring but failed billionaire knows all too well, plans are really quite easy to formulate - it's getting the job done that's so damned difficult. My plan as a batsman was to get a fine hundred every time. Good plan. Not sure there's a better one. It was the execution that kept proving tricky.

In truth, taking refuge in woolly talk about plans is a polite way of avoiding the subject: the players didn't play very well. Perhaps it's even worse than that and they aren't that good, full stop. This is obviously not press-conference territory. So, artful ways have been cultivated to avoid the subject. An implicit deal has been struck, perhaps without anyone realising it. The media agrees to give credence to the power of planning. But in return, when the wheels fall off, it reserves the right to lambast the management's bad planning. Clichés always develop for a reason: they suit everyone. So it is with planning. For the media (and the fans served by the media), insights into "planning" hint at the inside track, a glimpse at the secret whiteboard in the dressing room. To the management, it sounds strategic and proactive, as though they aren't just sitting on chairs fiddling with rosary beads and cursing under their breath.

	Occasionally a team with fewer resources and less raw talent can win. Far more often, however, the better team wins. Acknowledging that central fact is the essential foundation of any good strategy

But how useful is planning as an explanation of events? When I was growing up in the 1980s, economic gurus constantly pointed at the apparently superior Japanese model. They argued that Japan was likely to pull ahead of America because its firms pioneered gradual consensus-building and long-term planning. But between 1990 and 2013 the American economy grew by 73% in real terms, whereas Japan's expanded by 24%. In the new economy, light-footed tinkering, the ability to "pivot" (a Silicon Valley phrase that means changing direction quickly and decisively) has often proved far more effective than long-distance planning.

I write all this as someone with a lifelong interest in strategy. By nature I am considered rational rather than spur-of-the-moment and devil-may-care. It is precisely because I care about planning - and recognise its occasional but serious contribution - that I also know the limits of its remit. Planning can certainly make a difference. From Odysseus' Trojan Horse to Jose Mourinho's Champions League title with Porto, we know that occasionally, very occasionally, a team with fewer resources and less raw talent can win. Far more often, however, the better team wins, regardless of what's written on the whiteboard. Acknowledging that central fact is the essential foundation of any good strategy.

	A bowler struggling for form? Fix the fundamental problem first © Philip Spooner  Enlarge

Yet there is widespread reluctance to admit common sense. I see this first-hand when I sometimes play in amateur cricket. A bowler will be bowling all over the place - full tosses on leg stump, long hops wide of off stump. Clearly, he doesn't know where the ball is going. And then the captain calls him over for a long conversation about field placement, or, even more insanely, starts barking instructions like, "Come on! Like we talked about in the dressing room!" If the barrel of your gun is randomly crooked, the precision of your aim is totally irrelevant. You aren't going to hit the target. So first fix the gun, then we'll worry about the fine-tuning target practice.

As a professional player, I saw one spinner get a mild version of the yips. The coach's insight into the situation? "We need to work with him on how to construct an over." I'll say. He's got six balls to bowl (if we're lucky) and he doesn't know where any of them are going. Construct an over? Sounded awfully hi-tech to me, as though we were in masterful control of events, tweaking at the margins like chess grand masters. The truth was simpler: he was struggling to land the ball. "Constructing an over" was not a plan available to us.

England's bad ODI form is not about Alastair Cook. It is not about Peter Moores. It is not about being too loyal to the captain or too attached to outdated plans. The real problem is the England team. It isn't that good. Hasn't been for a long time. Especially in ODIs. Especially abroad. This is a difficult conversation, tending towards the nihilistic. So we talk about planning and tactics and captaincy instead.

How can the really salient facts be changed and improved? The whole cricketing culture in England needs to take white-ball cricket more seriously. We need better pitches for List A games at home that encourage attacking batsmanship and make greater demands of bowlers. We need to encourage innovation and risk at every level, not ask players to learn new tricks on the grandest stage.

That, I concede, is the outline of my own plan. But as I said at the beginning, plans are easy. It's getting them done that's so difficult.

Why are Asians under represented in English cricket?

by Girish Menon

A recent ECB survey found that 30 % of the grass root level cricket players were of Asian origin while it reduces dramatically to 6.2 % at the level of first class county cricketers. Why?

When this question was asked to Moeen Ali, he opined among other things, "I also feel we lose heart too quickly. A lot of people think it is easy to be a professional cricketer, but it is difficult. There is a lot of sacrifice and dedication," While some may view Ali's views as suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, in my personal opinion it resembles the 'Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans' metaphor highlighted by the economist Ha Joon Chang. Hence, Ali's views should not be confused with what in my perspective are some of the actual reasons why there is a dearth of Asian faces in county cricket.

The Cambridge economist Ha Joon Chang has acquired a global reputation as a myth buster and is a must read for all those who wish to contradict the dogmatic neoliberal consensus. Chapter 9 of Ha Joon Chang's old classic Bad Samaritans actually discusses this metaphor in detail. He quotes Beatrice Webb in 1911 describing the Japanese as having 'objectionable notions of leisure and a quite intolerable personal independence'. She was even more scathing about the Koreans: '12 millions of dirty, degraded, sullen, lazy and religionless savages who slouch about in dirty white garments...'  The Germans were typically described by the British as a 'dull and heavy people'. 'Indolence' was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature.

But now that the economies of Japan, Korea and Germany have become world leaders such denigration of their peoples has disappeared. If Moeen Ali's logic was right then Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Indians living in their own countries should also not amount to much in world cricket. But the evidence is to the contrary. So the right question to ask would be why has English cricket not tapped into the great love for cricket among its citizens from the Indian subcontinent?

If it wants the truth, English cricket should examine the issue raised by the Macpherson report on 'institutional racism in the police' and ask if this is true in county cricket as well. Immigrants, as the statistics suggest, from the subcontinent can be found in large numbers in grassroots cricket from the time they joined the British labour force. There are many immigrants only cricket leagues in the UK, e.g in Bradford, where players of good talent can be found. But, as Jass Bhamra's father mentioned in the film Bend it Like Beckham they have not been allowed access to the system. Why, Yorkshire waited till the 1990s to select an Asian player for the first time.

----Also read

Failing the Tebbit test - Difficulties in supporting the England cricket team

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Of course, if the England team is intended to be made up of players of true English stock only then we need not have this discussion. Some of the revulsion towards Kevin Pietersen among some of the establishment could be better understood using this lens. However, now due to its dwindling base if the ECB  wishes to get the support of Asian cricket lovers it will have to transform the way the game is run.

Secondly, to make it up the ranks in English cricket it is essential to have an expensive well connected coach. Junior county selections are based on this network and any unorthodox talent would be weeded out at the earliest level either because of not having a private coach or because the technique is rendered untenable as it blots the copybook. So, many children of Asian origin from weaker economic backgrounds are weeded out by this network.

This is akin to the methods adopted by parents in the shires where grammar schools exist. Hiring expensive tutors for their wards is the middle class way of crowding out genuinely academic oriented students from weaker economic backgrounds. Better off Asians are equally culpable in distorting the grammar school system and its objectives.

So what could be done. I think positive discrimination is the answer. We only need to look at South African cricket to see what results it can bring. My suggestion would be that every team should have two places reserved: one for a minority player and another for an unorthodox player. This should to some extent break up the parent-coach orthodoxy and breathe some fresh air and dynamism into English cricket.

Personally, I have advised my son that he should play cricket only for pleasure and not to aspire for serious professional cricket because of the opacity in the selection mechanism which means an uncertain economic future. He is 16, a genuine leg spinner with little coaching but with good control on flight and turn. Often he complains about conservative captains and coaches who were unwilling to gamble away a few runs in the hope of getting wickets. Many years ago, when my son was not picked by a county side, I asked the coach the reason and he said because, 'he flights the ball and is slower through the air'. With what conviction then could I have told my lad that you can make a decent living out of cricket if you persevere enough?

I envy the Scots. If only we English could also shake up our democracy

With its independence vote Scotland is able to ask big questions about its destiny. I have no idea what that feels like

• 
• • Suzanne Moore
  • theguardian.com, Monday 25 August 2014 12.41 BST

'I do not know what it is to be Scottish and feel utterly disconnected from Westminster politics. I only know what it is to be English and feel like that.' Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Imagine having a say, an actual say, in how your country is run. You might even consider big questions, like the distribution of wealth, the dividing up of resources, your tiny country’s place in the big bad world. You may go down the pub and argue with your friends about what your identity actually means, you may be already certain and slag off those who think differently on Twitter, you may be wavering on several issues. You may be just 16 and able to vote for the fist time in your life.

This may or may not be my business, depending of course which way Scotland votes in a few weeks time, but as this referendum hoves into view with another televised debate tonight, my main emotion is perhaps pathetically English. It is one of envy.

This conversation, this questioning about who you are, how you are to live and who is to be in charge, shows the essential internal organs of a political system being openly tested and examined. Here in Albion, there appears to be only stubbornly undiagnosed organ failure. I do not know what it is to be Scottish and feel utterly disconnected from Westminster politics. I only know what it is to be English and feel like that.

Every time I voice that, inevitably, I am told that somehow I should vote more. When and where exactly? Instead I see that power clusters in ever closer elites at the top of society. These closed shops hug themselves tighter than David Cameron’s wetsuit. The problem, we are told, is that Cameron surrounds himself with yes men. And the trouble with Ed Miliband is that he surrounds himself with people who are very similar to him, and so it goes on until the only real alternatives on offer are Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson. Some choice.

As I see it the Scots are always patronised by talking about independence in terms ofmarriage, divorce, and breaking up the CD collection. Yet I wonder what kind of relationship ever existed in the first place. It has long been apparent that what has gone on in the south-east, and in the City of London in particular, has clearly not been faithful to any of the values of a fairly basic social democracy. It has been about strident privatisation and the dismantling of the welfare state. Scotland at least gets the chance to reject this, English people don’t.

Because many of us have never lived in a United Kingdom. These words mean nothing to me.

Whatever the Scots decide, England will shake. And it needs shaking. If England is actually a Tory land and needs Scotland as a Labour colony, then England should face up to itself, and its demons.

Independence is also often framed in terms of maturity. Is Scotland ready for independence? Surely it is the other way round. Is England grown-up enough to see itself the way it actually is? For that, we would have to be seen and heard, reconnected to the democratic processes, and be far more honest with ourselves than we are often prepared to be.

The best debates about Scottish independence have asked big questions and often there are no easy answers. There is a truthfulness in that. Imagine if England could ask the same questions of itself instead of assuming that all was settled long ago. Imagine if we could do this without ceding to Ukip-style regression.

Scotland will do whatever it does. As I watch from afar, I cant help thinking for us English, chance would be a fine thing.

Murali Kartik: How to bowl spin in England

Murali Kartik in Cricinfo

It was my first match for Middlesex and the team's first of the 2007 Championship. We were playing in Taunton against Justin Langer's Somerset. Ed Smith and Richard Pybus, the Middlesex captain and coach, had told me that I would be only filling in for our four seamers with the odd few overs before lunch, tea, and towards the end of the day.

Middlesex had scored 600 for 4 in their first innings. Left-arm spinner Ian Blackwell had taken one wicket. When it was our turn to bowl, Marcus Trescothick smashed our fast bowlers and Somerset racked up 100 for 1 in about ten overs.

Off my first ball I had Trescothick caught bat-pad at short leg. The guy who was told he would bowl only ten overs in the day ended up bowling 50 and finishing with 4 for 168. The seamers picked up six wickets in the drawn match in which more than 1600 runs had been scored.

You need to be big-hearted to bowl in England. It always boils down to your skill and your heart. That is the lesson I learned in my nine years of county cricket, where I played for four different teams.

India will know that since England don't have a specialist spinner anymore - after Graeme Swann's retirement and the disciplinary issues Monty Panesar is struggling with - it's highly unlikely that they will prepare pitches that will spin big even on the fourth day.

So apart from your batsmen putting up enough runs on the board to let you go out and bowl with confidence, the key to succeeding and remaining consistent as a spinner is to not be attacking all the time. I read that R Ashwin said he would like to be a more attacking spinner. That's easier said than done, especially in England, and given the way Alastair Cook and his men played spin in India in the 2012-13 Test series.

	One of my ploys was to push a fielder deep into areas where I expected the batsman to hit. I was telling the batsman: I'm attacking you, so try and take me on

In first-class cricket in England you need to understand your role on the first few days. If the pitch is not doing much, you become the stock bowler, play with your flight, set in-out fields, depending on the batsman, and give control to the captain and the team.

The conditions also dictate how you bowl. In England it's important to pitch on the right length; for a spinner that is good length. It is a good defensive and attacking length to stick to, particularly on pitches that can be slow. In overseas series, I have seen Ashwin being cut and pulled a lot. You can't lose your lengths in England; you can, at times, play with your lines.

Another important element to bowling well in England is to put a lot of body behind the ball. As Sanjay Manjrekar has repeatedly pointed out, many Indian spinners use their shoulders and fingers to impart turn, which is why they don't get enough out of unresponsive pitches, unlike Australia's Nathan Lyon, who can generate bounce even on pitches that do not take turn because he uses his body a lot more.

During India's first tour match of the 2011 tour to England, against Somerset, Amit Mishra went for some runs despite having bowled well on the second day. When he asked me how I bowled on such pitches, I told him that he had to realise that spinners will be hit. So you need to play around with the batsman's mind and the field placements.

One of my ploys was to push a fielder deep into areas where I expected the batsman to hit. I would place a deep midwicket to Trescothick, who played the lap shot really well and frequently. People might say it is a defensive mindset but they should understand that I am trying to block the batsman's big shot.

You should not be reacting after a shot has been hit. Instead I was telling the batsman: I'm attacking you. I have close-in fielders but I am also placing a fielder here for the big shot, so try and take me on. Sometimes it plays with his ego but it also brings me comfort and gives me freedom to experiment.

In England it is also a question of mind over matter. It is about sticking to your strengths and doing your job. You know the weather can be cold. You know that sometimes the pitches are going to be really slow and might not take spin. When nothing is going well for you, and this happens to every bowler, you must stay positive and bowl well.

It is not always about thinking of wickets. It is about biding your time. You have to adopt a role: if it is cold, keep lots of hand warmers with you; if the pitch is not taking spin, tell yourself you are going to stick to your lengths; play around with the fields; play with the batsman's mind; stick to your strengths.

Indian seamers won't find it hard to get used to the Dukes ball in England since it's similar to the SG ball they bowl with at home © Getty Images

John Emburey, the former Middlesex and England offspinner, told me that it was always good to try things. He said that at Lord's, spinners, especially left-arm ones, usually bowl from the Nursery End to take advantage of the slope. Emburey, who was accustomed to bowling from the Pavilion End, would switch sides with former England left-arm spinner Phil Edmonds to bowl from the Nursery End and bowl tighter lines on the off stump to force the outside edge. So it is important to be aware and open to doing things that you will not generally do.

One advantage the Indian spinners have is, they will not find it hard to get used to the Dukes ball, because it is similar to the one they use at home, the SG Test ball, which has a pronounced seam. The Dukes ball stays hard throughout, which is a good thing for a spinner, especially on a dry surface.

At times, more than the pitches, it is the success of the seamers up front that plays a vital role in the spinner being effective. Some of the surfaces in England can be really slow, especially at Lord's and The Oval. There is nothing for spinners at Trent Bridge. The Old Trafford pitch can break up, but at the Rose Bowl it won't.

Overall, the pitches are not going to be conducive to spin, especially in the wake of England's series defeat against Sri Lanka.

Why we prefer our immigrants to be invisible

The treatment of cleaners at the University of London highlights our shameful treatment of immigrants

• 
• • Nick Cohen
  • The Observer, Saturday 21 June 2014 18.05 BST

Independent Workers of Great Britain pickets outside the University of London Commonwealth Hall. Photograph: Peter Marshall/Demotix/Corbis

The story of the University of London's cleaners ought to be a modern Made in Dagenham. Immigrant women were scraping a living on a poverty wage from an employer who wanted them to clean up other people's mess and get out of sight when they'd finished. They fought back and, in a rare uplifting moment in these dismal times, won. They forced the university to raise their pay from £6.15 to £8.80 an hour and give them decent holidays and sickness leave.

But no one will make a film about the university cleaners because it lacks the prime ingredient for a feelgood story: a happy ending. Instead, their experience tells a more hypocritical tale about the British attitude to immigrants. Public opinion is set against them. But for all the outrage, Britain still wants foreigners' money, and employers and the middle and upper classes still want foreigners' labour – as long as it is cheap and as long as the workers do as they are told and do not make a fuss.

In 2011, no one noticed the University of London's Latin American cleaners. They travelled on the early-morning buses or trains, when most of London was still in bed, and spent their days doing shifts for two or three different employers. To the academics and students they served they were next to invisible: seen but not noticed; essential but neglected. On the surface, the cleaners, porters, caterers and other contract workers must have looked easy to intimidate. I met Sonia Chura, their leader, and two of her comrades last week. They were all barely five feet tall and couldn't speak English. They were in a strange land that cared nothing for them. "What can they do to us?" their masters must have thought.

As it turned out, they could organise an unofficial strike, get back pay they were owed, attract the attention of the radical press and go on to win better pay and terms and conditions. Their achievement is all the more remarkable because their own union, Unison, did not support them.

Anyone who hopes for a stronger labour movement knows that trade unions must start recruiting the cleaners, shop workers, security guards, carers, maids, nannies and cooks who make up the new working class. By necessity, they must appeal to women and tackle the admittedly formidable task of organising new immigrants. Yet Unison turned on the cleaners.

It found technicalities that allowed it to declare an election in which immigrants ran for union positions invalid. When cleaners protested outside Unison headquarters, its officials locked the doors and called the police. If you want to understand why the British trade union movement is dying faster than grass in a heat wave, the vignette of Unison demanding that the cops control its members tells you all you need to know.

The cleaners did not give up. They joined and helped develop a tiny new union – theIndependent Workers of Great Britain. It is run by Jason Moyer-Lee, another figure who might have stepped out of an inspirational film. He was an American graduate student in London who was appalled by the way employers treated foreign workers and devoted his time to helping them, first in Unison and then in the new union

Now he must help save their jobs. The halls of residence the women cleaned will be closed. The contractors refused to say if they would move the activists to new work. Nor would the University of London, the umbrella body that comprises the London School of Economics, University College London and many another fine liberal institution. I asked its spokesman if the university would guarantee that the women would not be punished for asking for £8.80 an hour. That was a matter for the contractors, he replied. I pointed out that the university paid the contractors. If it said they must keep the activists, the contractors would obey.

"Of course," he said in a sing-song voice, "we absolutely believe in workers' right to peacefully protest." He made the University of London sound like a noble place, while avoiding a promise to ensure that the women were kept on. I later found he had dodged the question for a good reason. As the wretched man was speaking to me, the contractors were telling the activists that not one woman who organised a protest would get a permanent job. I hope they drag them and the university through every employment tribunal they can find.

But even if they lose a tribunal case, the Home Office will not be able to drive them out of Britain. Like so many of the Latin Americans here, they originally moved to Spain. The Spaniards gave them citizenship that allows them to work in any European country. They fled north to avoid the depression the euro crisis brought. As long as Britain stays in the EU, they are safe. They will find other work, too, if they abandon any thought of campaigning for decent treatment. Employers want compliant labour, whether immigrant or native. As immigrants are the easiest to exploit, they will always be popular

It is a nice coincidence that their struggle is taking place in a university. Foreign students are in the opposite position to contract workers. They have money; cleaners do not. Britain wants their cash, but it also wants to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Universities depend on foreigners to subsidise British students – nearly 20% of the output generated by universities comes from non-EU students. Theresa May, however, has driven down the immigration figures by ending the old system that allowed foreign students to pay off debts by working for two years in any job they could find after graduating. The number of foreign students keeping the academic "business" rolling in grew at 5% a year in the last decade but is falling now. I wouldn't be surprised if it fell much further. "We want your money, but we don't want you," isn't the most enticing sales pitch.

The richer parts of London have become creepy places. The streets are deserted and the houses dark. Foreign oligarchs have bought up homes as an investment, thus fuelling the Osborne housing bubble, which provides us with what growth we have, but they don't live in them. What a metaphor for how Cameron's Britain wants its immigrants. If they are poor, it wants them to be invisible, flitting uncomplainingly from one menial job to the next. If they are rich, it wants them to hand over their money and leave. Either way, it doesn't want to see them.

Kevin Pietersen: The England dressing room during the Ashes series was no fun - I'm glad to be out

By Kevin Pietersen

in The Telegraph 10:59PM BST 08 Jun 2014

I will have no anger, no negative thoughts whatsoever when England walk out without me at Lord’s on Thursday to play their first Test since the winter. I wish my friends in the England team well. I have moved on from the England and Wales Cricket Board’s decision to end my international career and have put things in perspective.

Fourteen years ago, I was an off-spinner from Pietermaritzburg who did not know where his life was going. I had a notion that I wanted to make a life in England but had no idea if I would succeed.

Now I have played 104 Tests, batted at all the best grounds in the world and been lucky enough to score hundreds everywhere. Could I play more Test cricket? Yes of course, but should I sit here thinking I should be playing on Thursday? No, because that is when jealousy and negative thoughts come into your head.

I am grateful for what I have had and moved on with my life. I have scored 13,500 international runs for England and it would be greedy to want more, so I am at peace with everything.

It took only a couple of conversations with my family to start thinking this way because of how much I really did not enjoy the winter. 

In fact, it has been a relief to be out of the dressing room because it was not a pleasant place in Australia. We were losing and in my opinion the environment was poor and I was not alone in thinking that. It is a view shared by a number of the players who have spoken their minds since coming back from the tour.

Now I have had time to reflect on the winter it is clear to me that back-to-back Ashes should never happen again. It was really hard for the England team to go to Australia and defend the Ashes just weeks after winning at home.

As soon as we arrived the Australian media turned the heat up on us. I have had that for years so it did not bother me. It was fun. But for other players you could sense it was a problem. The senior players were tired and it soon became a really long grind against an Australian side that had their backs up in their own country.

Australia knew they came close to winning here. The 3-0 defeat last summer was not a true reflection of that series in terms of the way they played their cricket and we played ours, so I knew it was going to be a tight return contest and we were not equipped to handle it.

Mitchell Johnson was sensational on those pitches and he was handled brilliantly by Michael Clarke. Even if he picked up a wicket in his third or fourth over of a spell, Clarke would take him off and save him for later in the day. It was brilliant captaincy. Johnson’s bowling was the best and most aggressive I have seen during my career, and I told him so at the end of the Test series when we shared a beer.

By then I thought that Andy Flower wanted me out. After the Sydney Test, a headline came out claiming Flower had said to the ECB it was either “him or me”. He denied saying that but the damage was done.

But my relationship with the other players was fine. We had an incredible tour on and off the field. I was helping all the bowlers out with their batting, and the night we lost 5-0 we were all having a drink in the bar together with our wives and girlfriends, which proves all was OK between us and still is.

I have no issue with the players, as many have said in interviews since the tour ended. I speak to Stuart Broad and I even organised for Graeme Swann to go on holiday to one of my friend’s hotels after he retired.

On a personal note, I did not score the runs I would have liked in Australia but I have played a certain way throughout my career and will continue to do so. There is method to my batting but I play on instinct as well and I would absolutely play that way again if we could go back in time.

In the first innings at Brisbane, I was caught at midwicket. As soon as the ball left Ryan Harris’s hand I thought ‘four’. I saw the angle and thought ‘bang it through midwicket’, but I got caught out. In the second innings, all I tried to do was help a short ball from Johnson to fine leg because it was too tight to pull, but I was caught again.

In Adelaide, I walked out to the crease and felt like I did not know which side of the bat I was holding. I felt that terrible and that is why I was walking at Peter Siddle and playing him on the full.

As soon as I was dismissed I walked out of the dressing room to the nets with Richard Halsall, the assistant coach, and spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to bat again. I felt that bad, the worst I have ever experienced in an Ashes series.

Why? I do not fully know. But my knee was hassling me a bit. I had an injection a few weeks before and during that innings it was hurting. In the dressing room everyone takes the mickey out of how I bend my knee during my stance because of how exaggerated the movement can be. But in Adelaide, because of the knee pain, I was standing a lot taller in the crease and that changed my game. I said to Halsall and spin coach Mushtaq Ahmed: “I can’t bat like that again.” I had to work hard to get myself back to playing normally again. In the second innings I made 53 and played very responsibly.

My dismissal in the second innings at Perth has received a lot of attention. I was caught at long on trying to hit Nathan Lyon for a second six. But if I see that ball again, I will still try to hit it for six. No problem. As he tossed it up I thought ‘six more there’. If you look at my career, that is how I play. People say it is irresponsible but it was not; it was successful.

Look at the innings that started it all off – the 158 against Australia in the 2005 Ashes at the Oval. I was hooking Brett Lee at 95mph into the stands. Any one of those shots could have gone straight up in the air and been caught. The 186 in Mumbai in 2012 is talked about as the best innings by a foreigner in India. I took risks during that hundred. I am England’s leading run scorer in all forms of cricket because of playing that way.

People say I should have ground it out. Should I? What would have been different?

What I have done during my career is ignore the ridiculous praise and the ridiculous criticism. I have stayed even and been mentally strong enough to keep believing in my methods and what I think is the best way for me to be successful.

It would have been easy for me to start defending a bit more. Would that have made me a better player? No. I am a risk-taker in cricket, in business and all parts of my life.

Coaching needs to focus more on natural talent

I have kept busy since my England career ended. I loved the Indian Premier League, even though results were disappointing for Delhi and now I am focused on Surrey and my business life.

I am extremely excited about establishing my cricket academy and foundation, which will launch in October in Dubai.

In total we have identified seven countries, including England, where we want to establish academies. The first is being built at the moment on a great plot in Dubai which will include a cricket field, pavilion and classrooms with the plan to coach kids between the ages of eight and 18.

My foundation will fund 13 disadvantaged kids and two chaperones from seven countries to come to my facility to be trained there for two weeks, guided by our coaching, taught the fitness and mental side of the game but to also have fun too. Then two years later I will pay for all the kids from the seven countries to come back and play a mini World Cup in Dubai against each other.

At the moment we are setting down how I want the kids to be coached and making sure we get that set up right.

My guiding principles are that I want to coach kids the way they play and not from a textbook. You want kids to grow up believing in their own natural talent and strengths.

I do not have a good technique at all. Sometimes I watch myself on television and I am embarrassed about my technique. I do not know how I score runs other than through self-confidence and belief in my ability.

Look at Lasith Malinga. How the hell does he get wickets bowling like that?

But his technique works for him. If he was a young England player he would probably have drifted out of the game. I have seen how coaching is now especially for kids. Ball on a cone, high elbow and hit through the ball.

In my opinion that is not the only way to coach and its holding back some natural talent. The game has changed and coaching has to change too.

I feel for Sachitra Senanayake

by Girish Menon

When the English mob and commentators unleashed their self righteous 'spirit of cricket' indignation on Sachitra Senanayake I felt the need to find out more about this unheard of cricketer who has caused a minor tempest in England's favourite brew container.

So, I looked up his career stats to find out that Sachitra is 29 and had already played 1 Test, 34 ODIs and 17 T20Is. I also learnt that prior to his 'Mankadding' of Buttler, in earlier ODIs of the current series he had been reported for a faulty action and asked to report to Perth for a bio-mechanical examination about the degree of flex in his action.

I happened to listen to Test Match Special (TMS) at the time of Sachitra's Mankadding incident and at the time the commentators were insistent that Sachitra had not warned Buttler earlier before running him out.  The commentators also alleged that English bowlers, unlike Sachitra and Murali before him, were unable to bowl the doosra since it would be ironed out by coaches at the junior stages itself.

Personally, I feel any bowling action which does not threaten the life of a batsman should be permitted. This will balance the equation between bat and ball and make for interesting cricket.  

In his book Lila, Robert Pirsig describes the English reaction when the first stuffed platypus was shipped there. At first, the traditionalists were aghast that nature had betrayed their classification. Also, they denied that platypi could lay eggs and then suckle their young. The traditionalists also tried to ban the platypus out of existence since it did not meet their classification code. It was only much later that the traditionalists accommodated  the platypus in the field of biology. 

At 29, Sachitra may feel like the stuffed platypus on its arrival in England. After investing so much time and effort in developing his skill, he is now being told that if he does not obtain a clearance from an Australian he will not be allowed to ply his trade.  England may or may not have had a role in the reporting of Senanayake, but surely this could have been done discreetly at the end of the series so that the Sri Lankan team would not be compromised in the middle of the tour. Isn't this a case of giving the home team an unfair advantage?

Yet, when Sachitra legitimately runs out Buttler after warning him twice against cheating, the umpires had the audacity to ask the Sri Lankan captain whether he wished to withdraw the appeal. The crowds aroused by a partisan TMS commentariat then boo the Sri Lankans and Sachitra in particular.

So, Sachitra you are not alone. I empathise with your situation. I also hope that you have an alternative career mapped out for I am not aware of any cricketer who has retained his wicket taking skills after his action has been re-modelled. So power to you.