| Author | Message | ||
     Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Anyone else here on strike tomorrow? I am and shall be climbing Belfast City Hall to plant a red flag on the top. Power to the People!! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I can't. I'm not in a union so I'm not protected if I choose to take the day off. Plus I can't afford to lose a day's pay. If there're any strikers outside my work I'll be making brews for them if they want one though. I fully support what they're doing. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
I'm on strike yes. Difficult decision but I have always supported whatever union I'm in. I was there in the great and completely ineffectual BT strike of 1987! Oh, when this pub closes Oh, when this pub closes The revolution starts. We'll shoot the aristocracy And confiscate their brass. Some old song they used to sing on a long forgotten old folk show in the telly back in the ealry '70s. Cheers Terry | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
It amazes me when I read what some people think life in the public sector is like. Apparently we all sit back in gold plated offices sipping expensive cocktails all day and get paid 5 times what we would in the private sector. Funny how that doesn't quite gel with my office with the paint peeling off the walls, an insect infestation, carpet older than I am, and pay at least 4 grand under what I'd have been on if I'd been able to stay at BUPA (where we did have fantastically nice offices and the company would give us works do's with free booze, bonuses every year as long as targets were met etc etc, and all the other benefits of working for the private sector). | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
No, I'm not on strike as I work for myself now, not a university per se. But a lot of my colleagues in the various universities will be - and more power to them!  | ||
| Rosswarren (Rosswarren) Username: Rosswarren Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 135.196.120.43 |
No,I will be 'enjoying' take your child to work day! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
My husband is hoping it'll be quieter on the roads though!  (he works in the private sector, by the way) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.27.143.88 |
I work in the private sector too, but I'm taking the day off to visit picket lines and attend the Birmingham demo (which I gather may not happen) and subsequent rally (which will happen). This isn't just about pensions: it's about defending public services as such. Tha attack on pensions is just a means of softening up millions of public sector jobs for private sector takeovers. The ConDems were quiet about that until recently, but now are quite openly saying they want no Council services to remain by the end of this term of government, and taking steps to ensure the selloff of every NHS hospital. As Aneurin Bevan said, the Tories don't talk much about class war: they're too busy fighting it. By 2013 the NHS will be only a 'kitemark' attached to private sector health providers as an assurance of quality. In ten years' time there will be NHS sceptics: people insisting online that the NHS never existed and could not possibly have existed. I wonder if, some time in the summer of 2010, Obama and Cameron agreed to swap health systems? Of course, it didn't work out on the US side of things because of well-organised, vicious, mendacious right-wing opposition. But on this side the adoption of the US syatem has gone through slick and easy thanks to well-organised, vicious, mendacious right-wing support. Tomorrow's strike is the last cry of British social democracy. Listen carefully. You may not hear it again. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.145.131.7 |
The biggest lie is that public sector pensions are unsustainable at current rates. The first thing the con-dems did when they got into power was close the PCT's - meaning that the 60 thousand people working for the PCT's will no longer receive a public sector pension. They're closing so many public sector jobs down and handing them over to the private sector (including all those jobs that the PCT's do - make no mistake, they've just handed financial control of the NHS straight into the hands of the lowest bidders in the private sector) that in 30 years time there'll only be a few thousand peoople eligible to receive them instead of the hundreds of thousands that are waiting now. I worked for a private sector health firm before I was made redundant and got a job in the NHS. Believe me, the pay and conditions are so much better in the private sector - better pay, bonuses every year, works do's paid for by the bosses with free food and alcohol, immaculate offices, subsidised food... the list goes on. In the NHS I've worked in one office where the wallpaper was held up with sellotape, and where I work now, we've got an insect infestation, the carpet is older than I am, the paint is flaking off the walls, the pay is rubbish - if I was still with the private sector I'd be on 5 or 6 grand more than I am now. the only benefit of my job is that, if by some miracle I'm still there in 30 years when it comes time to claim a pension, I should have a good one. And now the tory fuckers want to take that away from us as well. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
If we're quoting Nye Bevan... 'No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.' And he was right. The fuckers are systematically destroying everything decent and worthwhile in British society. Because that's what vermin do. Time to call in Rentokil. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
It bugs me when people in the private sector complain that it's not fair that the public sector get a good pension when their pension schemes have been damaged because of the bankers fuckups. In what way is destroying the public sector pension going to help their pension woes? It isn't. It's pure jealousy and in no way a valid complaint. they'd be far better off aiming their invective at the corporate fuckers who destroyed heir pensions. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
*their | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Trouble is a lot of the anti-public sector feeling is being stirred up by the press - I'm usually ambivalent when it comes to unions; I spent too much of my twenties at BT watching the unions there behaving like playground bullies. However, this time around the media looks to be firmly on the side of the government, and that, for me, is just another reason to feel the strikers have the right idea. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
On a connected note, I often felt unions wielded their power corruptly in the 'eighties. A friend then had an uncle who was "father of the chapel" (now THERE'S getting big headed); in other words head of the local print union. It was the union that decided whom the papers would employ in the printrooms, with the result that there were a lot of friends and relations working the print, not always to anyone's benefit - nepotism running rife at the bottom of companies, not just in the boardroom. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
and Osborne has apparently announced an extra 710,000 job losses in the public sector... that takes Con dem instigated job losses to well over a million... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
In fairness, it's 710,000 instead of the 400,000 previously announced, which means it's actually an extra 310,000, but still an horrendous amount. I can't quite see how having even more people out of work is going to get the economy going. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
(psssst - Weber - send me an email, I seem to be lacking your hotmail address....) | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
does this mean you've found a duckie? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I have no idea what yes you're talking about. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Have I just slipped into some kind of alternate reality where nothing is making sense to me any more?  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
No. But the aardvark is rising thrrough the custard. catch it quick before it transforms into a beautiful stuffed pepper. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.192 |
Artichokes!!! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Two for a pound in Tesco | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
If I went on strike at my primary job, everything in the museum would fall apart and if I went on strike at my secondary job people would starve and be sad. Methinks I should go on strike just to get a pay raise.  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
When the government decide we can have a day off for the royal wedding it doesn't damage the economy, but when the workers decide to strike for a day it costs the UK economy half a billion.... Is there something funny going on? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
My latest facebook post. So apparently the loss of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs isn't important in the real world. That's what people keep saying - "ha ha your jobs are in danger as well, welcome to the real world." We already live in the real world thanks to everyone who made the comments about "be grateful you've got a job". I am grateful I've got a job. i know times are tough for everyone. But when did Times are Tough suddenly change it's meaning to "let your bosses shit all over you. Just roll on your back and open your mouth wide"? The minute the condems got in they announced 58,000 job losses in the NHS. Then they announced 400,000 more public sector jobs to go a few months later. 2 days ago that rose again to 710,000. Will that rise to over a million in a few months? Quite possibly. Of course these job losses don't affect people in the private sector apparently. Lots of people in the private sector are just pointing and laughing. Apparently they've got shit jobs that they hate and/or are in danger of losing. therefore if they see other people's jobs in danger this is somehow a reason for them to be happy. This is a message to all you people who seem to love your schadenfreude. I hope you're still happy when you want to take your kids for a swim but you can't, because the council run pool has closed and the private one in its place is too damned expensive. When you can't join the local gym for pretty much the same reason. Look on the bright side, you can always take your kids to the park... except no one's really looking after it any more and all the equipment is rusted and broken and probably dangerous, and the overgrown grass is full of discarded needles left by the junkies who don't get moved on anywhere because there's not enough police any more. I hope you're still happy when your kids are in classes of 50 or more because there aren't enough teachers. When you or your kids get ill but your insurance won't cover it but the NHS doesn't exist any more... so you just have to suffer. Because jobs in the public sector don't need protection do they? Because it won't ever affect you if they all vanish. Us lot of winging sods in the public sector are only trying to look after our jobs because we're selfish and have no other reason for fighting to keep the services we offer in place... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
I seem to have slipped into a strange parallel universe where I'm approaching a level of eloquence in my language... I'm sure normal service will be resumed shortly. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
Well put, Marc. And of course, it impacts the private sector in another way... there'll be massively reduced buying power among the newly unemployed, which will in turn reduce private sector profits. Private sector employers facing reduced profits will quite probably cut back on staffing levels, further swelling the ranks of the unemployed, where they'll find it harder to get jobs... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Playing devil's advocate, because I'm not understanding..... Surely, Weber, many people in the private sector are losing their jobs - in fact, I'd venture to say, equally amounts to the public. But, they lost their jobs already, in the last 3 years (and are still losing them). Have you done a comparison graph, private vs. public sector jobs, and when they exactly went away? Do your complaints appear at times of peak private sector job attrition? When private sector jobs vanish, tax bases vanish. Their taxes, pay your wages. With no taxes from them, your wages have to come from... thin air? Where exactly? Hence, the job losses in the public sector. Just wondering - have you crunched numbers and done all the math? As it is, Europe is on the edge of total economic collapse, which if true, will sweep both the U.K. and the U.S. in a wave of recession supposed to equal the Great Depression - views held by those (here in the U.S.) on even both the right (e.g., Glen Beck) and the left (e.g., Jim Cramer). Greedily clutching onto public sector jobs - that take into account benefits, wages, etc., calculated from pre-crisis booms; that can't reasonably be sustained realistically in depressed economic environments - in the face of massive massive private sector unemployment, seems... well, selfish, frankly... says the devil's advocate.... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Weber & Simon - don't assume we all feel the way the media would have you think. I think this private/public sector thing is media driven - I work in the private sector and am fully behind those in the public sector, as are all my friends, most of whom also work in the private sector. It's the media (and maybe the government too) who appear to be taking a 'divide and conquer' approach. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Well said, Mick. This is too important and emotive an issue to let the real villains off the hook. Decent working people are being hoodwinked into pointless squabbling with each other. We are all, public and private sector workers alike, being made to pay and take the brunt of the "sacrifices" we are told are necessary to bail out the greedy bankers and fatcat businessmen who frittered away our money and security to keep themselves in comfort. Their levels of pay and refusal to take any of the hurt on their own backs condemn them as devoid of social conscience, while the spineless crony politicians who bow to their every whim, and, yes, the disgustingly conservative stance of the media, show them to be complicit in this shafting of ordinary working people. There comes a time to stand up and be counted, to sacrifice a day's pay and more, to show these arrogant bastards, who intend to destroy our way of life, and any semblance of fairness that has been built up in society since Victorian times, in order to protect their own vested interests, that it is us - the People - who really pull the strings, and they're going to fucking well have to start listening to us. Or else... For me, as a confirmed socialist of the old school, who believes in shared values and co-operation as the best way to build a healthy and fair society, Wednesday's day of action was only the start of that process. Vive la Révolution!! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
I was responding to assorted members of my family, one of whome posted this "how many people are unemployed ? how many families are worrying about where the next meal is coming from or how to give their kids a christmas like others? how many are being made redundant and getting pay cuts? me thinks the strikers need to look at the big picture ! oh and thanks for affecting my day off you shits" So i was trying to point out that there is a bigger picture than his day off being disrupted. Stevie, if yoiu want to add that onto my facebook post, feel free. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
I was entertained to learn that the Daily Wail was rather shocked when an online poll found that 80-90% of their readers supported the strikers. Of course, they might not all have been Daily Fail readers, but in the words of one of the Daily Heil's own columnists, you couldn't make it up... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
Craig - if the company you work for announces it's laying off so many people that it will not be able to keep up the productivity it needs to survive, you would try to talk your bossses out of it. The company I work for is this country. The number of public sector job losses will be catatstrophic to the country. A little judicious pruning of jobs to reduce the slack is possibly advisable. But the mass cull of jobs in the public sector is completely wrong and will damage the country even more | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.116.166 |
Simon, can you post a link to an article about the Daily Mail readers... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.29.143 |
Here's a fact that sheds an interesting light on our current Conservative overlords. In 2008 the Tory policy think tank Policy Exchange (founded by Michael Gove and Francis Maude, who are now Cabinet members) recommended a drastic solution to 'urban blight'. Where a place was 'beyond revival' due to the decay of lifestyles, expectations and values, the Policy Exchange proposed that it should be emptied and demolished, with its people being moved to the South-East of England to make a fresh start. The places it identified as needing to be destroyed included Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford. The Tories did not put this in their manifesto, but the Policy Exchange remains their core source of research-based policy. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
"The places it identified as needing to be destroyed included ... Bradford.... with its people being moved to the South-East of England to make a fresh start." Well, you wouldn't get me moving from just outside Bradford back down to the south-east again. I spent a couple of years around the Buckinghamshire/Hertfordshire border and I wouldn't want to live back down there again if you paid me! It just felt so soul-less around those parts. At least Bradford and its outskirts have some character. (no offence to anyone here who lives in the south-east  ) | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Hah! Well, none taken! However I have stayed in Bradford... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
 I must admit, I probably *would* want to move back down south (I'm a southerner by birth) if I still lived in inner Bradford - not a good place to be at all nowadays. It was quite nice when I first moved up here in 1978 though. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.9.228 |
Character, you say? Where's that, then. Can you be specific? And will I need my glasses? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.24.25 |
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-dismisses-abandon-the-nort h-call-893998.html?action=Popup | ||
| David_m (David_m) Username: David_m Registered: 07-2011 Posted From: 95.147.193.86 |
'Here's a fact that sheds an interesting light on our current Conservative overlords. In 2008 the Tory policy think tank Policy Exchange (founded by Michael Gove and Francis Maude, who are now Cabinet members) recommended a drastic solution to 'urban blight'. Where a place was 'beyond revival' due to the decay of lifestyles, expectations and values, the Policy Exchange proposed that it should be emptied and demolished, with its people being moved to the South-East of England to make a fresh start. The places it identified as needing to be destroyed included Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford. The Tories did not put this in their manifesto, but the Policy Exchange remains their core source of research-based policy.' Almost beyond satire. Almost. May they reap what they sow. |