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Local authority strikes

This will be interesting:

Strike threat after councils impose two-year pay freeze
Scotland faces a winter of disruption to vital public services after council workers reacted with fury to the imposition of a two-year pay freeze.

Last time around, 78/79, such strikes were a factor in the electorate saying that the government of the time, Labour, had to go. Something was rotten with the state of the nation and a change had to come: in comes Maggie.

We might think that the same will happen this time: the government of the day gets it in the neck for screwing up so badly.

Maybe.

It\’s also possible that public opinion will go the other way. We\’ve got to hunker down in these harsh economic times: why shouldn\’t the public sector as well? If jobs are being lost all around, private sector pay is static at best, why should they get another wodge from our taxes?

It\’ll be interesting to see which way it goes. It might, just, go like the housing benefit thing did. As limits are announced various lefties rise up screaming that this will crucify the poor. Then, as people realised that the limit was £400 a week, that the annual limit was more, still, than many earned, the general feeling (my evidence being CiF comments, not the most reliable of sources admittedly) seemed to become, well, quite right too.

It\’s essentially a PR exercise now I think. Put upon and dedicated creators of the community? Or public sector fat cats who do little work and enjoy massive pensions?

3 thoughts on “Local authority strikes”

  1. If the public sector do go on strike, then people will realise how much work they really do do. If they have the strikes I suspect most people won’t notice much difference* and will think that we might as well do without these non-workers anyway.

    If there is a lot of disruption from public sector strikes, one thing that could happen is that the people working in the private sector and fearing for their jobs will tell the public sector to take the hit too. There might be violence, but not from the strikers, but against the strikers. From those who think the public sector have taken the piss for too long.

    * There are exceptions such as garbage collection which are very visible.

  2. Tim,

    It’s Scotland, so there is another option…

    The Scots will whinge about how the evil English Tories—for whom they didn’t vote—are once again victimising the poor Scots for ideological reasons, and it’s just like the Poll Tax all over again, etc.

    In fact, I pretty much guarantee that this is how it will go down unless there are lots of strikes here too. Which there probably will be.

    DK

  3. This might be a once-in-a-generation chance to visit destruction and desuetude on the tax leeches. Last time was 1979, and Maggie, and how she became the engine of our deliverance. I have little faith that the weak-tea combination of Clegg and Cameron will be able to do anything other than utterly bottle it, but there’s still a scant hope they might not.

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