THE WORKERS, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DIVIDED?

Theatre nurse Eleanor Smith (centre), President of Unison leads health workers out on strike at midnight from the Birmingham Women's Hospital
Well, here we are on November 30th – the day the State sector has chosen to hold us all to hostage. With Diversity and Equality co-ordinators off for the day, it’s gonna be a tough one. It’s also been a tough start to the day on the BBC what with the Met Office being out of commission, no sign of Humphyrs or the fragrant Sarah on Today, but Evan Davies and Justin Webb have been doing their best for the comrades on the picker lines. I was entertained by this interview with Trade Unionist Dave Prentice, with Webb claiming the government are “spoiling for a fight”. Really? If the government were any more supine on this they would be horizontal yet through the BBC prism this is Thatcher in 1979 all over again.

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32 Responses to THE WORKERS, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DIVIDED?

  1. Natsman says:

    Here in France, these “national days of action” are two a penny, and apart from the loudest shouters, nobody really takes much notice, and life goes on pretty much as normal.

    How a “day of action” in the UK can bring the country to its knees, beggars belief (even considering the fact that it’s half way there anyway).

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  2. matthew rowe says:

    Up here in the island it is horrid I haven’t seen a public sector worker all day how will we survive? well apart from the fact I have never seen one doing anything anyway and it’s to windy for them to picket so they are all at home being militant to the kyle show !
    Then again the last time they had a day of inaction only the union rep at the job center went on a lazy day everyone else took the pay check lol !

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  3. Number 7 says:

    A certain E Davies was highly amusing this morning on Toady.

    On hearing a report that there were no problems at Heathrow it sounded like he was about to burst into tears – poor diddums.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      It is a big story, deserves extensive coverage and, dare I say it, ‘reporting’.
      What it does not warrant is the BBC and its hacks running around trying to shape things to the satisfaction of the union bosses’ PR desires.
      The BBC twittosphere is alive with barely concealed glee at vast numbers of folk who do not enjoy golden pensions (if indeed they have any) being knocked for six or, more and more, desperate prop-ups when things are not going as damagingly as they hoped… er… have been told… er … 

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  4. Bupendra Bhakta says:

    Yes, on Radio 5 Rusting Iron Lung this morning, Gameshow Nikk ‘CAN YOU HEAR ME RACHEL AND GEORGE’ was over at Gatwick fulfilling a lifelong dream and manning the picket lines.  

    My sources tell me he was standing round a brazier with ver bruvvas looking all butch in his brand new donkey jacket and DM boots, and ‘avin a quiet word’ with the drivers of employees minibuses as they turned up.  The studio was fizzing with a level of excitement I haven’t come across since I took the bupettes to lapland.

    Every now and then a (n off-message) voice from the real world would come in with a, ‘we laid off half our work-force last year’, or a, ‘we closed our final salary scheme ten years ago’, but they were swept aside by the droids blissful as they were to be alive in such a dawn as this.

    Look at the bright side though, folks, albeeb going 24/7 wall-to-wall with this has kicked Kamp Krusty and Newscorp’s minor breaches of the Telecommunications Act of the airwaves for a day.

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    • Bupendra Bhakta says:

      Sorry, did I say I took the bupettes to Lapland.

      I meant ‘Christmasland’. Yeah, that one where the reindeers were rottweilers with polystyrene antlers and security was provided by the local bail hostel.

      Meh, the kids enjoyed it, they’re only young.

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  5. London Calling says:

    Look at the slogans – “Decent Pensions”, no doubt some want “Fair Pensions” Ever masters of the weasle words is our Unite. Back to the Blair years and the corruption of the English language by the Left.
    How about “We demand Pensions of the amount we have paid in!!” Doesn’t quite hit the same spot. Or how about “We demand actuarially solvent pensions!!” No that doesn’t do it either.
    What about “Better pensions paid for by those with worse or no pensions!!” Now you are getting closer to the truth. Go for the jackpot: “We demand uniquely-funded bBC-type pensions – based of pay set to market rates that are never subject to the test by the market” Oh damn, it won’t fit on a placard. Banner anyone?

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    • Bupendra Bhakta says:

      Couldn’t agree more.  Whenever any halfwit on tv or the radio is aked to justify their position the best they can come up with is ‘because it’s fair’. 

      I remember ahead of the election, on Snoozenight. one Labour Brown Ugly when asked what her party could offer the country piped up with, ‘Our fairness agenda’.  Bang on cue in comes the Lib Dum, Jo Swinson, with, ‘we’ve got a fairness agenda as well’.

      Still it’s a good thing that every working adult in the country is contributing to a pension scheme; unfortunately, for half of them, it’s someone else’s pension scheme they’re contributing to.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      Excellent.

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      • As I See It says:

        ‘unfortunately, for half of them, it’s someone else’s pension scheme they’re contributing to.’

        Bullseye.

        And lets not forgat that 13 years of NuLabour have not only expanded the public sector but have politicised it. From teachers to council workers to Beeb jounalists many are now full blown ‘elf and safety PC cultural socialists – more suited to giving you a lecture on communism than guarding borders or educating our kids.

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    • matthew rowe says:

      My partner works for the R.A.F and she gets 18k as a MT supervisor  but all the unionised drivers that she is in charge of  get 25k+ but  she isn’t in the union so the union rep  has blocked her any pay rise as it would be unfair if she got it and their comrades didn’t ?? and they talk about fairness  tossers!

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  6. Span Ows says:

    “…for half of them, it’s someone else’s pension scheme they’re contributing to.”

    This is all that needs saying to anyone who suggests these strikers have even a shadow of a leg to stand on.

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  7. Beness says:

    Cant remmember all this fuss when i lost £20,000 from my fund. And i’m a Unite member.

     Oh thats right. Gordon brown stole my money and i work in the private sector so i deserve everything i got. (or should that be everything i lost).

    Hmm.

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  8. Abandon Ship! says:

    Listening to Radio 4 and 5 Live this morning, I get the distinct impression, rather surprisingly, that beeboids in general support the industrial action. Their attempts at balance are so obvious you have to laugh.

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  9. David Preiser (USA) says:

    “a new militancy in the Coalition,” eh?  What a giveaway.  Does the BBC really need to use belligerent words like that?  Silly question.  To be fair, Webb did point out how Prentiss was lying about there not being any negotiations.

    The union mouthpiece didn’t like it, though. “I’ve known you for a long time, and I know your interest is in economics.

    “You also know as an economist…”  LOL.  Or should that be “LSE”?

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  10. Deborah says:

    How are we going to know a real approximation of the number on strike – the BBC has banded the 2 million figure so often for the past few weeks that it is the only figure that will be remembered.

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    • My Site (click to edit) says:

      Ah, the BBC as a font of trusted figures, by trusted figures…

      http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/public-sector-strikes-serwotka

      ‘A BBC opinion poll just before the strike showed 61 per cent thought it was justified, while only 36 per cent disagreed. Why should that be?’

      Heck of a question Mark, heck of a question.

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      • My Site (click to edit) says:

        Interestingly, there is what the BBC says, and what it also says..

        BBCNormanS norman smith Govt say only 1/4 of civil servants on strike,58% of schools closed and just 14 out of 900 Job Centres shut.
        Norty step for you, Norm. The polls, and such as Mr. Serwotka cannot (be seen to) lie.

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  11. john in cheshire says:

    On the subject of pension funds, thanks to Mr Brown, I have lost many tens of thousands of pounds from my fund and will be lucky if it pays me enough to pay for the necessities; you know, food, heating and other utilities. Normal people at the time just kept on doing what they do; making a living to feed their families. Public sector employees didn’t bat an eyelid when this theft by the socialists was going on. And they expect us to sympathetic to them now. I don’t think so.
    In my case, as in many others I suspect, I am dependent on interest from my savings. And over the past 4 years, again, I have been a very significant loser. Did anyone in the socialist world take a stance on this when Mr Brown and his cohorts made these decisions? Did they hell.
    I am now poorer than I ever imagined I would be at my stage in life. And things can only get worse, so goodness knows where I’ll be in a few years time. Maybe the socialists will reintroduce the poor house and I can live there, thanking providence that they are such caring people, creating a world where their hypocrisy can prosper and they manifest their love of the masses by treating people like me with such bitter contempt.

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  12. Roland Deschain says:

    It must have hurt them to publish this tweet, but publish it they did, on the main news page:

    Stephen Pollard, Editor, the Jewish Chronicle
    tweets: Weird standing in middle of deserted Trafalgar Sq as strikers with better pension than I have march to demand I pay them even more.

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  13. Martin says:

    Well I was in London today (one of those private sector scumbags, you know the ones who pay for everything) and to be honest I couldn’t tell that 2 million people were on strike.

    No one was talking about it on the train or the tube.

    Clearly most of them are not needed and so should be sacked.

    The BBC in particular seems to be trying to ramp up the strikes as some sort of workers revolution.

    The worst thing is on Radio 5 this morning not once did Dame Nikki (despite my many texts) bother to ask the union leaders where THEIR outrage was when the one eyed shit from Fife was raping MY pension to fund lesbian condom advisers and climate change officers.

    Brown put 1 million people on the public payroll and Osborne is getting rid of about 750,000 of them and about time as well.

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  14. ian says:

    What “day of action”?

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  15. JOHN GUEST says:

    The Workers United…..just make a better target!

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  16. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Oh, dear:

    Heathrow has never been more efficient! Passengers’ glee as border agency strike SPEEDS UP passport control

    Passengers who had been warned of lengthy delays at Heathrow due to striking workers today said border controls were ‘better than usual’.

    As Border Agency bosses were forced to take on regular airport workers to man passport control, delighted passengers said queues had been shorter than normal.


    The situation was echoed at Dover too as passengers faced apparently normal travel conditions with ferry services ‘running well and to time’ this morning.

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    • Millie Tant says:

      Haha! You just have to laugh. Talk about the indispensible wonderful public service workers, without whom the country would go to the dogs! Looks like a bit of an own goal there by the union barons, who tripped over themselves in their eagerness to bring down the Tory toffs. 😀

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  17. Big Harry says:

    I work in the private sector, my wife in the public one, Today she went into work, across the picket line.  The union rep didn;t get onto the picket line until 9.30, then with the strength of their cause filling their hearts, the picket line, all six of them,  disappeared at 10.30.  They went shopping and then went home.  A day off, unpaid, except for the union plastic communists of course.  Carry on comrades

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  18. John Horne Tooke says:

    Well I have an admision to make. It is shocking I know but I work in the public sector (boo, hiss). And being a public servant I did what most other public sector workers wanted to do and went to work as normal. Well, thats a bit of a lie, I actually sneaked in at the crack of dawn before the picketts had time to finish their weatabix. I was not alone, some much braver than me actually walked straight through the union agitators.

    Public sector workers really do not deserve all the bad press they get some are really dedicated people (and I like to include myself in that). There cannot be an employee who treats their emloyers better than the Public Sector. There are hard times ahead for us all. Why is Greece so burdened with debt and Spain and Ireland? Its because they have been pouring money at non-producers. Good public services can only be had when the country is earning money. This is known by most people. The strikes are political, they always have been and will be in the future.

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    • John Horne Tooke says:

      You will find that the small minority of public sector workers who do not see their role as serving the public were the ones waving the banners and obstructing people are actually trying to do their jobs.

      I remember the miners strike and I tell you despite the BBC wanting to beef up this “Christmas Shopping” day, it was nothing like as bad.

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    • Millie Tant says:

      Ireland had a low percentage of debt until the banking crisis. That pushed it up from something like 20 – 30 % to around 120% of GDP.

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