The One That's Glad He Isn't A Member. . .

I believe that unions are very important. When well managed and run they can head problems twixt the office and the shop floor before they even take hold.

Unfortunately, there's a section of unionism who exist to do nothing but it stick it to the disgusting capitalist pigs, who no doubt throw fallen women from their sports cars whilst they doff their top hats at their counterparts in other industries and cackle and twirl their moustaches.

Today's speech from Cameron will no doubt bring the militant unionists to the fore, and I'm fairly certain there's going to be strife in the public sector. There are some very militant people in public sector unions. I saw the election list for the recent PCS elections and they should have come with their own revision notes. There were thousands of people from units and departments I've never heard of and will never understand what they do.

The public sector is bloody huge. As detailed previously, the axe is bound to fall near me, perhaps even on me. I'll have to make sure I'm worth my money, or I'll have to deal with the consequences. The axe has got to fall. No matter how well argued the points, no matter how compelling the cases, the fact is we do not have any money. Unions have to accept this point, otherwise the BA example will be followed.

Speaking of which, isn't it odd how quiet Unite have been over the strikes? Nothing on the news, no delays, obviously BA aren't going to shout about the passenger numbers they've lost, but you can bet Unite wanted people queueing out of the door at Terminal 5, going feral and eating pigeons, it hasn't happened. Bad news for Unite and their members. Management at BA will not take long to join the dots.

With so many staff out and a functioning if not comprehensive operation running, BA management will start to re-examine their staffing levels.

This is the danger with strike action. I absolutely, and without reservation, support the right for employees to unionise and to go out on strike. The problem with strike action is that it is rather a blunt instrument, and unions, and more importantly their membership, have to take care that going out doesn't undermine their own position. It's a minefield, and one that has to be negotiated with great caution. To say that 'when a strike goes ahead both sides lose' may be a cliche, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

The problem, certainly in my workplace, is that some union officials agitate for strike action, they try to lead their members rather than be led by them, or at least attempt to amplify the feelings of the staff.

The danger comes when the union officials start to treat the organisation as their own fiefdom. The NUM is a prime example, not belonging was not a realistic option and the behaviour of the officials was questionable at best.

The miners' strike was the daddy of industrial strife in my lifetime, I'm not about to get involved in the politics of the situation, it is Israel vs Palestine, Unionist against Nationalist, far too big a subject to cover here. However I will say this, I remember a conflict which ceased to be about the miners fighting for their jobs, and became a story of Scargill vs. Thatcher. It became about the union's officials rather than the union's members.

And then today we see news that since his retirement in 2002, Scargill has been living in a flat in the Barbican, paid for by the members of his former union. I don't know what the membership of the NUM was at the height of the strike, but by their own admission;

there are 9 collieries left with only 3,000 miners.

Is it really right to have what is now a small union keeping their former puppet master in this fashion?

This is where my problems with the union movement lie. An organisation that is supposed to support the workers, leans on and bullies them, treats them like chattels and serfs, as much as any evil top-hatted Victorian capitalist industrialist ever did.

And all the time they're being told it is for their own good. That to me is reprehensible.

Any union that treated me like that would find themselves short of my subs in very little time.

The One That Is Face-Palming. . .

I despair, I really do despair. Even with my tenuous grasp of economics I understand that this is utter, utter nonsense.

The working week should be cut to 21 hours to help boost the economy and improve quality of life.

And who came up with this excellent idea?

The New Economics Foundation.

Who?

a left-wing think tank.

Ah. Right-ho.

the reduction in hours would help to ease unemployment and overwork.

No, no it wouldn't. Well, it'd cerainly ease overwork, because no-one would be working. The simple truth of the matter is that unemployment would shoot through the roof.

Why?

Well, one of two things would have to happen.

A: People would expect to be paid what they are paid now. Read as: Rabid Socialists with no grasp of market economics would demand and legislate for businesses shutting the fuck up and paying people exactly what they are paid now, whilst in a single stroke doubling the size of their workforce and all the associated costs in training, HR and equality issues etc, etc. The result? Private business would disappear. Unemployment goes through the roof, the burden on the public purse stretches past tolerance levels, the country goes bankrupt, gangs of very, very angry people start roaming the streets to kill and steal.

B: People will not only halve their hours, but will also halve their incomes. People will have no disposable income, they will not be able to afford food, prescription charges, fuel for their cars. Retail business in this country will fall apart as people simply would not have any money to spend. They will default on their mortgages and fail to make rent payments. Evictions and repossessions would spiral out of control. The result? Unemployment goes through the roof, the burden on the public purse stretches past tolerance levels, the country goes bankrupt, gangs of very, very angry people start roaming the streets to kill and steal.

Heres' the kicker:

The foundation's policy director Andrew Simms added: "A cultural shift will throw up real challenges (no shit, like survival for example - Wolfers), but there could also be massive benefits for our economy (like it would cease to exist - Wolfers), our quality of life (we could go back to hunter gathering - Wolfers) and our planet (we'd all be dead in ten years - Wolfers).

"After all, hands up who wouldn't like a four day weekend?"

I'm sorry? Are you really, really advocating a return to the three day week?

Fuck me backwards over a yak with a pineapple and goose fat, they really are completely, completely mad. This goes beyond normal throwing a nokia, nose-mining loopiness, this is full on destructive, murderous, criminal insanity. If you think you can stomach it, the whole suggestion is detailed here, although as suggestions go it seems to be as inviting to me as being asked if I'd like to put my genitals in a food-blender.

The One That Was Genuinely Sad. . .

It's not too often I praise the BBC, but I believe that credit is due where it is due and so I will take the unusual step of saying how impressed I was with the last two episodes (I missed those that preceded them) of 'The Lost World of Communism'. The last two editions featuring the artistic, well, Bohemian and dignified disobedience of Vaclav Havel and his mates in the former Czechoslovakia and latterly the family run business of the Ceaucescus in Romania.

Something Leg Iron has posted tonight about the over 40's being 'invited' to go for a health 'MOT' prodded at a point that I found most disturbing when watching the show last night.

I fail to understand why people attach themselves to Socialism, there will always be the situation in Socialism where the rights, views and ideals of person A trumps the rights, views and ideals of person B. I do not believe that anyone's rights (and I prefer the word Liberties) can be more important than anyone else's. When one person's needs are overriding someone else's then the only outcome will be resentment, and we're seeing the consequences of that ourselves.

Socialism is not Communism, it is embryonic Communism. As far as I'm concerned, being a Socialist is akin to only being racist against Chinese people. Only a little bit racist. But that undesirable aspect is still there.

The BBC show portrayed, without amplification and without sympathy, the soul crushing misery that a collective system like Communism produces. It wasn't the imprisonment for daring to criticise or lampoon the authorities, the restrictions on travel, having your house bulldozed in front of your eyes and being moved into a freshly built hovel with no windows, doors, heating or water, it wasn't the big things that filled me with despair for the people who had to exist in those conditions, for that is what it was, an existence rather than a life. It was the little things that made me feel so very, very angry; grandparents being forced to queue for 14 hours for half a pat of butter for their grandchild, having your ID confiscated by the police because you were male and had long hair, having to hold a Christening for your child in secret, lest the Securitate find out. To subject people to such inhuman indignity is unspeakable.

Leg-Iron's tirade against the 'health MOT' reminded me of the monthly intimate inspections visited upon women of childbearing age in Communist Romania, to check they had not had an abortion. In the world of State ownership, not even a women's uterus is her own.

A 'health MOT' and an intimate monthly inspection are not the same things, but they are of the same essence. The difference between the two is the same as the difference between a burger and a filet mignon, but the similarity is that they are both beef.

Socialists and Communists in the UK would maintain that what happened in Romania could never happen here, but I think they are naive. I don't hate them, I would never embark on some McCarthyist campaign, but to look at the list, China, North Korea, USSR, Cuba, Poland, Romania, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Cambodia, good God, Cambodia, anyone who thinks that a British Socialist utopia would be different is living in a dream world.

The problem with a system where there is no accountability will always end up with one person sitting at the top imposing their own beliefs on everybody else. It is a sad fact of life that politics and especially high office, attract people who are convinced of their own infallibility, their mission from God or their quest to change the world into something in their own image. It will be done for our own good, if we disagree we are either mad or idiots, either way we are not worthy of listening to. Where this kind of person takes indefinite charge of a country, misery is the only outcome, it is human nature and a lack of recognition of human nature has always been Communism's biggest failing both in the governing and the governed.

Examine Brown's reaction to the attack on him in the Dan Hannan video, he sits there grinning away. He isn't grinning because if he doesn't he'll be scowling on the front page of every paper, he's grinning because he really, honestly thinks that most people share his thoughts during the speech. 'Jeez, listen to this guy, he's absolutely barking, he thinks I'm screwing it up! Boy is he going to look silly on the news tonight.' Brown thinks he's winning and that the moonbat will be held up as the nutter's nutter.

In the case of Communism, there must be conformity, there must be a working towards the common purpose, the easiest way to ensure conformity is to stifle and remove dissent.

When I look at what we have here in the UK, and perhaps more importantly, in the EU, I see shades of that Communism, of that obligation to conform, to do as I am told for my own good. I see a burger, but as I look down the table I see that fillet steak and realise it's made of the same stuff as the patty in front of me.