You've been Clarksonned!

I choked on my polenta when I was listening to BBC News over supper and heard some grim harridan talking about the offence she had taken (on behalf of her members, as I think she was something to do with a union) at Saint Jeremy's comments on The One Show.

I was going to write a foaming and angry post about how some people just need to get a life and see a jokey remark as just that, but then I saw this post by The Heresiarch and decided not to bother. He says it all far better than I could, and fillets UNISON's press release mercilessly.

I didn't think anything could make me think worse of trades union leaders than I already did, but their response has proved me wrong.

IT. WAS. A. FUCKING. JOKE.

A bit like those the left makes about dancing on Thatcher's grave, or blowing up schoolchildren in the cause of climate change. Those were humorous, weren't they?

Weren't they?

No-one will notice, no-one will care ...

... when the staff of TV Licensing go on strike today.

More than 500 staff at sites in Darwen, Lancashire, and Bristol will strike after a ballot by members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU).

The CWU said workers had been offered a below inflation pay rise of 2.6%, following a two-year pay freeze.

Employers Capita said workers had received a "good and fair offer" in light of the economic climate.

So far, so usual. Union thinks rich bosses should share proceeds of ill-gotten gain with downtrodden workers. Employer thinks pay offer is extremely fair in the current circumstances and the union should butt out.

CWU, consider this: Capita won't budge. They have a history of not budging. The only chance you have is for the general public to rise up and demand that Capita renegotiate, a bit like they do when they can't get to work, or when their bins aren't emptied, or when Grandad stays unburied.

I can guarantee that people will not mind in the slightest if they cannot pay for their TV licence. In fact, they may well be overjoyed. The BBC may well portray it otherwise, for obvious reasons, but no-one else in the UK will either notice or care that you haven't turned up for work today.

---

And, by the way, in the UK, at least ...

'Licence' - noun - I forgot to get my TV licence.

'License' - verb -I forgot to license my TV.

If you get mixed up, remember advise/advice. It's the same issue, but as they sound different it's easier to remember. Practise/practice and prophesy/propecy too, although that's a little more obscure.

Don't thank me. All part of the service.

In which I disagree with Boris

I'm a big fan of Boris Johnson - one of the few bits of genuine colour and individuality in our entire political scene. But I have to disagree with him over his latest pronouncement.

Writing in the Telegraph, Boris condemns the latest round of Tube strikes, and says:

It simply cannot be right that a little over 3,000 people should be able to disrupt – or to attempt to disrupt – the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. The Government should consider a law insisting on a minimum 50 per cent participation in a strike ballot.

The Government should have no role in regulating the affairs of a private organisation. I would say that about a club, or a society, or a private business, and I say the same about a Trade Union. The law should not prescribe the proportion of members, nor the percentage of votes, that are necessary to make a strike valid. A Union can be as silly as it likes, saying that 5% of votes in favour of a strike, and at least 5% of members voting, is enough to trigger industrial action, as far as I am concerned. As long as the members are happy with that, the law has no place in changing it to anything different.

There is a change in the law that I would support, however, which would ensure that coercive, destructive and politically-motivated strikes are a thing of the past. Simply remove the special protection that Unions have when they choose to break the law of contract. If a worker chooses to break the terms of his or her employment contract in an attempt to coerce the employer, then the employer should be able to consider that contract void, and look for someone else to do the work.

I fully support the right to strike - in the sense of the right to withdraw one's labour. No-one should be forced to work against his or her will: that would be slavery. But no-one should be able to walk out of a job on a whim and expect it to be waiting for them when they decide to go back. That might make union members think a little harder before deciding to make the lives of thousands of others a misery or put costs on the business that the business cannot afford. The current arrangement puts the employer in an invidious position, and is a perfect example of a right without a corresponding responsibility.

If Governments tinker with the details - 60% here, 40% there - they are simply legitimising an arrangement that is fundamentally wrong.

Some of us remember the 1970s

Yes we do.

I was brought up in a solidly Labour household, where "The Conservatives" (never the 'Tories') were nothing but money-grubbing swine who wanted nothing better than to make profits at the expense of ordinary people, and where the greatest criticism of anyone was to call them 'selfish' (which the Conservatives were, by definition). The Labour Party and the Trades Unions may have had their faults, but were always excused for having their hearts in the right place. Both my parents were a product of modest working-class upbringings, and I am sure that this defined their world-view, but at the same time they were both immensely moral people and their motives were of the highest.

The rot for me started in the 1970s. I was at University from 1972 to 1975, living in a rich leftie environment where any support for Heath or Mrs Thatcher would have been social suicide, but it became increasingly clear to me that we were going in drastically the wrong direction.

Young people today who weren't even born when Margaret Thatcher left office like to talk about the damage done to 'society' by 'Thatcher', as if this were an undisputed fact. They have no idea of just how depressing it was to live through the 70s. It seemed that every day there was yet another dispute, another strike, another work-to-rule, another chippy twat on the TV complaining that "management need to come back to the table and negotiate seriously", code for "what part of 'do as we say' don't you understand?". The inconvenience of constant transport strikes, bin-men work-to-rules and council worker go-slows was wearing, but my abiding memory is the sheer depression caused by the constant bickering and bullying in the news media. It seemed as though 25% of all news bulletins was given over to instustrial action (more properly named 'inaction') of some kind. And, of course, the Government of the day (Labour, under Jim Callaghan, for those of you with short memories) treated it all with weary resignation. How could they do otherwise, when the instigators of the trouble were their own paymasters? It seemed as though the whole situation was as inevitable as the weather. And then along came a politician who said that it needn't be like this, who promised change and had the willingness to take some unpopular decisions and see them through, and in 1979 I, along with millions of others, became part of Mrs Thatcher's landslide victory.

I had some difficulties with her style and presentation, and I didn't agree with all of her moves, but few would argue today that the changes she made were vital for the economic survival of the country. After the miners' strike, it seemed as though the political landscape had changed for ever. When Blair came to power in 1997, it looked as though the changes had stuck, and that Labour was going to return as a post-Thatcher party, having absorbed the lessons of the 70s.

That went well, didn't it?

And now it seems as though the 70s are about to be recreated. The BBC reports that:

The public will not accept large-scale spending cuts, TUC chief Brendan Barber has said as trade unions gather in Manchester.

Mr Barber said unions would reach out to the wider community to form a "progressive alliance" to make the case for alternatives to spending cuts.

And RMT union leader Bob Crow called for a campaign of "civil disobedience" in protest at spending cuts.

They dont get it, do they? Their party has given Britain the biggest deficit in the last 50 years, and they propose more of the same as a cure. Furthermore, they are planning 'resistance':

Earlier Mr Crow said if there was a "concerted effort by this new government to attack workers in all different parts of society" then workers taking action should "co-ordinate that resistance to defend working men and working women".

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said industrial action was "inevitable" but added: "It is clear the most effective opposition would be the biggest popular movement we have seen for many years."

This is like looking out of the kitchen window and seeing Tyrranosaurus Rex strolling through the back garden. It may be all noise, and I hope so. But I have a feeling that we are going to see selected scenes of the 70s all over again. And for those of us old enough to remember it the first time, that's a depressing thought.

Old Holborn has some interesting figures on how much these guys actually earn:

Bob Crow (RMT) £118,000
Dave Prentis (Unison) £127,000
Derek Simpson (Unite-Amicus) £118,000 with a pay rise this year of 17%
Mark Serwotka (PCS) £110,000.

Figures include pension contributions, car allowances and expenses. Allegedly.

Downtrodden workers, or bolshie hypocrites frightened of losing their perks and status?

And at least partly paid for out of your and my taxation. The Coalition needs to end payments to the Union Modernisation Fund, and fast.

Nostalgia

Ah, isn't it wonderful to visit the past now and again? British Airways strike going ahead, rail strike on the cards. It's Tony Woodley and Bob Crow instead of Jack Jones and Arthur Scargill, but the script is the same.

Network Rail's "reckless gamble with rail safety", according to Bob Crow. (It's always about safety, even when the strike is about pay.)

Tony Woodley accused BA of "wanting a 'war' with the union". (It's always 'wanting a war' when the other side don't back down like they are supposed to.)

Yeah, yeah. Those of us who lived through the 1970s have heard it all before. It was depressing then, and it's depressing now. My greatest concern is that there are people who will vote at the forthcoming election - anyone under 40, basically - who have not lived through this kind of thing before, and think it's just how things are, or that somehow this is a one-off.

It isn't. It's what happens when trades unions get a sniff of weak government and think they can get away with it. We have been mercifully free of it for around 20 years now, but anyone who can remember the constant strikes and work-to-rule 'action', with the airwaves full of this or that chippy Scouser talking about 'management intransigence' or 'subordination of workers' rights to the greed of over-fed capitalist shareholders' will remember how utterly miserable it was to switch on the news every night and find that the first three items were on the latest industrial action - i.e. what goods or services we would be doing without next.

Whatever you think about Mrs Thatcher, a least she put a stop to that. Are working people less well-paid or have fewer rights as a result? I don't think so.

It's great to be back in the 70s again. I think I will put on my brown cords and tank top, tie back my ponytail, and put a disc of Gilbert O'Sullivan on the gramophone.

Public Service Cuts?

Recently, the public sector union UNISON published a video which highlighted all the essential jobs which might be put at risk if there were serious cuts in public spending. It was pretty good, and quite persuasive.

The Taxpayers' Alliance have been messing about with it, and now it's even better.