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Why the Tories will struggle to get an anti-trade union meme going – politicalbetting.com
Why the Tories will struggle to get an anti-trade union meme going – politicalbetting.com
Here’s spontaneous concern about strikes and trade unions since 1974… it’s not yet in top 10 concerns of British pic.twitter.com/iD0STRdB0C
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https://twitter.com/NetworkRailSE/status/1615013217540997122/photo/1
That's some serious arcing.
I'd expect there would need to be a year or more of sustained strike action before the public get really peeved. At the moment there are other concerns, and many people generally feel sympathetic to the strikers.
Of course a small minority could number in the hundreds of thousands - a shocking number - but still a minority overall.
The government recognises that so the current bill is at the edges, you can't let people die by withdrawing your labour. But we have all seen ambulance crews leave the picket line for category 1 and 2 calls already. The government is seeking to pick a fight which doesn't exist.
Public sympathy might be with groups such as nurses, but less so for doctors, teachers and train drivers, who all earn middle-class salaries well above median income. If the Whitehall mandarins go on strike, will anyone actually notice?
The changed working practices, especially of white-collar workers, bought on by the pandemic, mean that the transport unions have much less ability to cause widespread disruption to the economy than was traditionally the case. Many City workers will be ‘supporting the strikes’, because it means they get to WFH for a few days.
Personally, I do not think that flexibility should come in the form of lump sums or one off payments. The inflation of the last 12 months has changed the nominal standard of living permanently. Inflation will fall sharply this year but there will be no general deflation. A one off payment is an acceptance that those employed will have a permanent fall in their standard of living going forward. Why should they?
Otherwise any increase in public spending is going to be Labour's problem...
But that said, just because something has continued to date doesn't mean it will continue in the future. You are falling for the inevitablist view of history.
Or (big if) someone somewhere is trying to be responsible.
A couple more centuries ?
Mr. B, who remembers the kings of Rome? Perhaps only a few beyond Romulus and Tarquin, but it lasted two and a half centuries.
Inflation damages confidence and investment. It makes everything more expensive, harder to budget for and afford. Expectations of more inflation in future fuels high wage demands, which are resisted due to budgetary pressures, which in turn trigger strikes that damage economic growth. If wage demands are accepted on a grand scale it can lock further inflation into the system - and thus becomes a viscous cycle.
What we are seeing now is a bit of how stagflation happened in the 70s. It shouldn't be as bad because the economy is now far less unionised and more diversified, we are also more diversified in our energy sources (not just oil) and the legal landscape is different. Were any of that not the case we'd have a repeat, and possibly worse.
Sunak desperately needs the headline inflation figure to come down (it probably has already peaked in reality) and to use the latest economic figures - already revised - to work out how much extra headroom he's got in the public finances to cut a deal.
Sympathy for NHS nurses is widespread but I'm yet to find any colleague who has something printable to say about ASLEF or the RMT.
And consistently over the past few decades the UK public has shown that it has no interest in an increased tax burden for the sake of health, education, whatnot. It prefers to lurch from overshoot to overshoot with successive governments or every few elections. eg - spending run down in 1997; no money left in 2010, and so on...
“I was working at 16, I was paying tax at 16, I could make decisions for myself at 16,” she tells @KayBurley
https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1615249674004201472
I fear opposing the Gender Recognition Act will do as much damage for the Tories as Section 28 in the long term.
I liked Casino's viscous cycle; inflation is indeed sticky.
Screw the medical profession.
Slightly off topic but Mrs Eek has joined unison for the first time after 30 years because the next set of local authority cutbacks look likely to hit the legally required but slightly less legally required than social care planning departments.
Any pretence of hitting application target time frames have been binned by virtually everyone.
The Tories are rightly opposing a lunacy we will all come to regret
Who wants to take a risk on an outlier with the focus on you if it's wrong and then look all exposed and foolish?
Much safer for you and your business to cluster and then say everyone got it wrong for reasons.
I always remember Martin 'Kaboom' Boon (who i think i relentlessly took the piss out of at the time) who suppressed the 37% ICM poll rating for the Conservatives in the run up to GE2015, but I'd probably have blinked too.
Not all "apparently progressive movements" are for the good
After taking inflation into account, average pay fell by 2.6% in the year to September to November 2022, both including and excluding bonuses.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ONS/status/1615243603785170947
Local derbies decrease the odds on a home win. But that makes the high home advantage of the EPL (more than half the sides have at least one other local team) even stranger.
That is, after all, what successfully sells the EPL around the world. The passion and the history
Long-term = ???. Women of my generation are highly supportive, if my friends are anything to go by.
Annoyingly, I lost some other (time-consuming) statistical work I'd done on home advantage for leagues in given seasons. The lowest in the last three years or so was a Bundesliga home win rate of just 38% in one year.
Mr. Ace, either that or the SNP have deliberately stepped beyond the bounds of their authority to provoke a row.
They are however no longer allowed to get married.
Modest pay, with even more modest increases, rather repetitive and bureaucratic work, infuriatingly mediocre people, sticky and slow career progression, and appalling management. Rules for everything.
A good pension and "not my job" rights isn't enough to tempt me for that.
Hell, even my actual trans woman friend - who had gender reassignment surgery decades back - vigorously questions the implications of the GRAct in Scotland and despairs of the radical trans activists
I'm talking specifically about 25 - 30, who are the people I chat with. Might be a symptom of those who disagree being scared to speak up though.
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/TG*1
Interesting that the price rises started in 2020 or 2021.
Breaking news: UK wages grew at the fastest rate seen outside the pandemic period at the end of 2022 https://on.ft.com/3COqQo7
https://twitter.com/FinancialTimes/status/1615257068927156224
We might do it on here because we are largely anonymous and no one would raise their eyebrows or put in a complaint (cf mate of mine - yes I know - who was addressing the new board of the company he had just sold was told he had committed a "minor aggression" for calling the whole meeting "guys").
Plus it's complicated. Self ID at 16 live a life of happiness and contentment; self ID at 16 regret it years later. Who the fuck knows or can tell.
For kids 15-25 they actually believe it, in a vague way, as they have grown up with it. They will grow out of it, and look back in horror. But a lot of damage will have been done, by then
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/implementation-of-the-marriage-and-civil-partnership-minimum-age-act-2022
Although I note it doesn't actually come into effect until next month, so technically 16 year olds can still get married.
There seems to me to be something faintly bizarre about a culture that raises the age of marriage and lowers the age of gender conversion, but then many things about our current mob of politicians strike me as bizarre.
It is the surgery and the puberty blockers and the rest which are abominable, when given to actual children
(Usually it would be in the garage, but I'm storing some furniture from my Dad's house there until I can sell it and there isn't room for both!)
The benefits office in Newcastle outsourced to EDS, but some staff were TUPEd in on their existing terms.
The civil servants were unionised, negotiated pay deals and slow career progression, but wanted their final salary pensions.
The EDS staff had higher pay, faster promotion, but will never have the same pension rights.
Both sides seemed happy enough with their deal.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/half-of-spaniards-okay-with-ukraine-losing-some-land/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=28390&pnespid=rOduDj9HML0FgfCf_DrqE5iQvEquRp1nIuWkmbsw.hxmQHI4DJckG_bxtdEZldGR2_zM_.Jj3A
https://euroskopia.com/europeans-divided-about-ukraine-quick-end-despite-territorial-cost/
One mutilated, lopped-off, scarred girl is too many.
#topsurgery is mastectomy for psychosocial disturbance, which girls mostly grow out of
https://twitter.com/GChristiemd/status/1613953027852963857
*Edit: According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The public sector ones I've encountered are more likely to be - I don't know how to do that or see Dave (as they point to someone in the corner who holds the entire department together with some excel and a lot of anguish).
"She came like a storm, a force to be reckoned with
Martha Tiler, the Iron Will, our Prime Minister
She divided us, with her policies so strict
But her leadership, you couldn't help but predict
She privatized, she unionized, she went to war
She changed the nation, forevermore
But now her time has come, her reign is through
Martha Tiler, our divisive leader, we bid adieu
She was the Red Right Hand, of British politics
A Mercy Seat, for some, a curse for others
Into the Arms, of history she'll be
Where the Wild Roses Grow, her legacy
But now The Weeping Song, echoes through the land
For a leader who, with a iron hand, lead this nation
But now she's gone, and we're left to mourn
Martha Tiler, forever in our hearts, will be reborn.
Please note that this is a fictional example and it is not to be taken as a real obituary of any person living or dead, this is a form of creative writing and also, it's not meant to be disrespectful in any way."
There are very good people, but they are the outliers, and plenty of very average ones climb to the top and grab MBEs and OBEs with awful behaviours.
But it is arguable we need to see them. This is not about grown men who like dresses (good luck to them, let them wear what they like). This is about horrible mutilating surgery given to kids who are not old enough to understand the implications, which are clearly lifelong and often medically horrendous
lol
The age of sexual consent, at 16, is actually now the outlier in legislation on the age of majority.
If only we had a footwear specialist on PB to give us the defintive answer.
I was at a NYE party in a very conservative Oxfordshire village where one guest started ranting about "Mick Lynch and his Trotskyite mates". All the other guests stared at him as though he'd arrived from outer space - partly because talking politics at a party is Not Done, but also (I think) because there's some sympathy for people looking after passengers for tuppence and being asked to take a real pay cut.
eg Anyone who is a parent of someone aged 9-18 will likely have a view on this
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64300190
On topic - the sheer gall of the Sunak cabinet beggars belief. The Nadim Zahawi tweet where he shows Starmer in Mick Lynch's pocket is unreal, linking Labour to their "union paymasters" who quite pointedly doesn't include the RMT.
The responses are funny, so much anger towards Zahawi's own tax issues. There's even a remake of it showing Zahawi in the pocket of Gulf Keystone Petroleum's CEO... https://twitter.com/iamdanduke/status/1615137206632419331
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/12/20/nurses-and-ambulance-workers-have-most-public-supp
Machines will absolutely do all that. And convincingly like a human. And it will be very very good art, in its ability to amuse, move, inspire, depress, purge, and redeem us