The strikes on the railways are just the tip of the ice berg. There is a summer of discontent coming.

YEP. teachers, nurses and other nhs workers next.

I used to work in education. The pay isn't bad as a teacher on the face of it - but the workload is absolutely shocking.
I would easily be putting in 60 hours a week in a 'normal' week, and during the "holidays" that you all think we get I would work at least half of those. We would be expected to come in and do revision sessions during holidays, after school sessions etc, parents evenings, open evenings, so really when you work it out you are earning minimum wage. And don't even get me started on the bullying culture that exists on staff in many schools. and if you work in a 'tough' school its even harder.

all that is before COVID, I really don't know how my ex colleagues have dragged themselves through the last two and a half years. I look back know and think F*** what I put up with!

nurses are in a similar boat with shortages and all the extra they are having to do.

Awaits Sal Paradise on his return telling you that's Rubbish

After watching all the media clips I was a paid up member of the fan club and ready to get the Lynch t-shirt. But then I saw him asked if he regretted urging his membership to vote to leave the EU, and he said he did not.

Now personally left wing brexiters make my skin crawl. We already know right-wing littler England types have a warped world view but for the left to be quitlings is utterly disgusting. It is perfectly legitimate for socialists to be ideologically opposed to the EU as constructed. However, they have a duty to ask themselves a fundamental question, is the working man and woman better off in the EU or out of it. I'd argue that if he thinks the working classes are better off out of the EU he's either a liar or he's unhinged.

So the fact that Lynch was a committed brexiter back then, and he is unapologetic for it to this day, more than cancels out the goodwill I had based on his sparring. A little Friday rant as I'm way too hot.

The difference with the private sector is wage inflation impacts costs - these costs have to be passed - this is resulting in much higher costs across all industries. We are not getting 2/3% increases we are getting 10%+ this is just for firms to standstill.

If you add the costs of raw material and transportation to wage inflation you have a toxic mix that will fuel further inflation or drive job losses as firms who can't pass on these increases go under.

The public sector is different HMRC/DVLC/NHS/DWP wage increases don't drive anything significantly other than taxation to pay for it i.e. it isn't passed on

Unfortunately for the Tories, who are encouraging this strike for all they're worth because they perceive huge electoral advantage from it, the world has moved on a long, long way since the 1970s.

Most people simply don't find trade unions to be terrifying bogeymen any more, they don't see working people fighting for decent wages and working conditions and conclude they are the enemy. Because they are fights so many would love to have, if only they had the power.

40 years of Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite policies have created a country with vast wealth inequality and insurmountable social mobility issues. A country in which the Conservative-supporting elites bribe their way to have the ear of government officials, are in happy receipt of lucrative government contracts (where they deliver worse results for more cost than when things were done in-house) and who pay low, little or no taxes. And where, perhaps most important of all, the free market has been so corrupted that companies like Amazon, the big supermarkets and giant conglomerates and oligopolies are able to drive small businesses out of existence and drive wages down across the board with their anti-competitive behaviour.

The country's economic model has clearly fundamentally failed. The generation for whom the mention of "unions" drove them to voting for Thatcher is sadly largely dead now and younger people simply don't have the same perspectives. The upcoming fight will inevitably be similar to France: between a band of hard core extremists of the far right (who have taken over the Tory party), the young who are jaw droppingly left wing and the centre for whom the fight to preserve and restore free market values will generate a very large, quite unsatisfactory big tent. The Tory party's grievence-based politics, their culture wars and their attempts to find wedge issues will only take them so far, but they will milk it for all they're worth in the hope of getting enough voters to vote for them or not vote for the opposition to enable their minority rule to continue. Labour's task is to try and knit together a coalition of the centrists, increasingly appalled by the extremism of the Tory party, and the left - and that will be difficult indeed.

Quote: Sal Paradise "I don't agree about the Amazon's/supermarkets etc - they provide good value - the smaller shop has to change their model to compete - offer something the customer wants to buy - it does have to be cheap. Amazon/Ebay have shown the way regarding on line and there are millions of small retailers now operating in this way. They just can't afford to pay the rent/business element of a retail operation. '" Amazon and the supermarkets are operating continually in anti-competitive ways. They need to be broken up to restore our free market. A client of mine used to supply Tesco with tomatoes. Tesco would come to them and set the price, no negotiation and they set terms of something like 180 days. This isn't a free market of supply and demand, it's big businesses hammering small suppliers because they have all the power in the world. Amazon is even more egregious. They have been allowed to expand into the marketplace. You would no doubt laud small entrepreneurs bringing products they have conceived to sell on Amazon Marketplace. However... if a product does well, suddenly an Amazon equivalent will appear. And the product of the entrepreneur will mysteriously fall down the rankings so that nobody goes to it any more. Amazon shouldn't be both the biggest retailer in the world and the biggest marketplace for goods in the world. It's a blatant anti-trust violation. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressco ... ip_20_2077 Let's not even get started on how Amazon sells books. But like all huge companies its main aim is to drive competitors out of business after which it can jack up its prices. Likewise we know about the working conditions at Amazon warehouses. If there's one ethical thing you can do today, one stand you can make it's to stop buying at Amazon, stop using Tesco and Asda and walk down the street to your local shops and buy there, or use second tier internet sellers. And encourage everyone you know to do the same. Because the dream of these big, unregulated monsters is to have no competition and the ability to jack up prices and profits in the long run, all at our expense.

Quote: Sal Paradise "I don't agree about the Amazon's/supermarkets etc - they provide good value - the smaller shop has to change their model to compete - offer something the customer wants to buy - it does have to be cheap. Amazon/Ebay have shown the way regarding on line and there are millions of small retailers now operating in this way. They just can't afford to pay the rent/business element of a retail operation. '" Amazon and the supermarkets are operating continually in anti-competitive ways. They need to be broken up to restore our free market. A client of mine used to supply Tesco with tomatoes. Tesco would come to them and set the price, no negotiation and they set terms of something like 180 days. This isn't a free market of supply and demand, it's big businesses hammering small suppliers because they have all the power in the world. Amazon is even more egregious. They have been allowed to expand into the marketplace. You would no doubt laud small entrepreneurs bringing products they have conceived to sell on Amazon Marketplace. However... if a product does well, suddenly an Amazon equivalent will appear. And the product of the entrepreneur will mysteriously fall down the rankings so that nobody goes to it any more. Amazon shouldn't be both the biggest retailer in the world and the biggest marketplace for goods in the world. It's a blatant anti-trust violation. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressco ... ip_20_2077 Let's not even get started on how Amazon sells books. But like all huge companies its main aim is to drive competitors out of business after which it can jack up its prices. Likewise we know about the working conditions at Amazon warehouses. If there's one ethical thing you can do today, one stand you can make it's to stop buying at Amazon, stop using Tesco and Asda and walk down the street to your local shops and buy there, or use second tier internet sellers. And encourage everyone you know to do the same. Because the dream of these big, unregulated monsters is to have no competition and the ability to jack up prices and profits in the long run, all at our expense.

It's a difficult conundrum, for sure.

The Tory ethos has been to squeeze the public sector wages and cut back services over the past 10+ years.
The absolute bare faced lies from Government Ministers and the PM suggesting that their pay has kept up with inflation is f****** shocking and is a deliberately
repeated lie to try and put those workers in a bad light and its ridiculous that the media dont call them out on this.

There is an horrendous double standard where limits on city bosses bonuses are being scrapped at a time when public and private sector workers are seeing massive real terms pay cuts.

The use of incorrect numbers to suggest that the average pay in certain sectors is much higher than the actual average is another tactic being used and again, needs calling out.

One of the drivers to inflation in the UK, putting our inflation above many of our European neighbours is the plummeting value of the £, making ALL dollar based imports much more expensive.

It's strange that in years gone by, a cheap £ would help drive exports but at the moment, largely due to Brexit, this isn't happening.

Certainly interesting and worrying times.

I believe de Pfeffel is now blaming Public sector pay demands for the higher inflation and a longer cost of living crisis. The man is completely clueless he and his bunch of the unemployable who have made things worse and yes my wife went several years with a pay freeze or increases of 1%.
The problem this time is that the unions are no longer perceived to be an enemy so he will need to find another group to blame. With Brexit not going well that rules them out, the opposition, no they have not been in power for 12 years, what about immigration but we are suppose to have this under control.