Apparently millions of people were on strike today. I didn't notice anything different. The post office was full of long-past-their-bury-by-date geriatrics as usual and the bank was full of people with bags full of coins and cheques and none of them had the right weight of coins per bag. It's a good thing I'm not allowed to have a gun.
I even took the short cut across the Council car park and noted that while it was less packed than usual, it was more than half full. What they do in there remains a mystery to me but more than half of them were doing it anyway. I don't suppose the ones responsible for council tax were on strike. It's direct-debit day tomorrow and someone has to push the button when the relevant committee tells them to.
A strike in November has little appeal for the sensible here. It means paying to heat your house all day when you could be sitting in a warm office and getting your heat free. The hospital was apparently on strike but the nurses weren't and neither was Casualty so the important stuff was still working. I wonder if the NHS Smoke Puritans were on strike? That would have been welcomed by the inmates and most of the staff too.
One noticeable effect of the strike was seen at UK border control. It was apparently much more efficient with the usual staff out of the way. Oh dear, that wasn't what the strikers wanted to happen, I'm sure. They're back at work tomorrow so it'll be back to normal, unfortunately. Perhaps they could be induced to strike for longer next time.
I'm neither for nor against the strikes. I don't much care what Ozzy does to pensions because I will only get the small one I built up before becoming self-employed. I don't care what he does to retirement age because I have no intention of retiring. I'll work until I die because I enjoy what I do. What would I do in retirement? Potter about a lab, write some books? I do that now.
So the medics are on strike. I don't trust them anyway. I know they are lying about smoking and drinking and five-a-day and more, so what can I trust from them? If I take my sore wrist to the doctor I am sure it will be smoking-related or drink-related (it was in fact paint-related but they don't have that one on the books yet). It's getting better gradually on its own. No need for painkillers, but I have a bottle of Grants at hand just to take the edge off. Currently £16 a litre in Morrison's. Cheaper than drugs and fewer side-effects.
[Cheapskate Aberdonian tip - if you have a visitor who drinks brandy drowned in Coke, refill an empty Courvoisier bottle with Tesco Own Brand. Saves a fortune and in all that Coke, they can't tell. Same goes for whisky and mixer drinkers. That's why I have a whisky decanter. It saves me the pain of watching someone pouring lemonade into the good stuff]
If the border people are on strike, does that mean that for one day only there was nobody stealing legally-bought baccy? Who could complain about that, apart from the Dreadful Arnott and her zombie horde, or the BMA - who are already on my list of liars anyway.
As for Ozzy's generosity in his little budget, he's not going to hike up petrol more than it's already hiked, at least not just yet, and he's going to cut the rate of increase in money we throw into the sea to look generous. All those dictators will just have to make do without gold-plated tyres on their Ferraris for now.
It was quite a trick. Making an increase in Government wastage look like spending cuts. For many out there, he pulled it off too. There are lots and lots of people who think he really is trying to cut the deficit. Let's just hope they work out they've been scammed before the next election.
As for the strikers, well, if they want to do it again I have no problem with that at all. It seems to have made little difference this time. Let them make a habit of it and the private sector will soon adapt with childcare facilities in large businesses and pooled childcare between smaller ones, and eventually these will become schools. That, as far as I can see, was the only real problem they caused and let's be honest, one day off from watching porn films and learning how socialism was responsible for the creation of the universe won't harm any child.
Otherwise, everything seems to have carried on quite nicely without them. A few more strikes and those town halls might get back to what they were supposed to be doing, once they've realised that nobody actually needs LBGT/ethnic diversity outreach departments and smoking cessation officers and booze price watching committees.
Perhaps then we can have councils who concentrate on doing the stuff we really want done.
12 comments:
You have guests who ruin good Brandy and Whiskey with mixers? We have a shoot on sight policy for that.
They only think they get the good stuff ;)
"long-past-their-bury-by-date geriatrics "
Bit too close to home for me, that.
Re the customs strike: not only a lack of tobacco confiscations but a the lack of blue-rinse grannies being shaken down for WMDs.
With all the talk about cuts to public services, I’d have thought that the last thing that the unions would be wanting to do is to highlight how little so many of their members actually do by calling them out on strike for a day. Apart from hearing about it endlessly on the news, how many members of the public actually noticed any difference yesterday? The impression that I got was that some families with school-age children noticed the absence of teachers, and people needing the emergency services noticed the lack of staff there, but apart from that, how many people were dismayed by a one-day absence of Equal Opportunities Diversity Co-ordinators or Youth and Community Outreach Workers? Indeed, how many people would be dismayed by their absence for a week, a month, a year ....?
If the Government were sensible (which they’re not), they would use this strike (and proposed future ones) as a very useful exercise in establishing exactly which of our over-inflated public service staff can be cut without any particularly vehement backlash from the rest of the electorate.
And amongst all the talk about the “cost to the economy” of the strike, I’ve yet to hear on the radio, TV or papers exactly how much the Government will save by not having to pay all those strikers for their day of non-work. I suspect it’s a pretty penny, but I doubt if they’ll publicise it …
It was a local public holiday here for St Andrews day so they all got paid anyway. Double time for scabs.
My green bin wasn't emptied so the planet will burn and die. I think.
18:59
how many people were dismayed by a one-day absence of Equal Opportunities Diversity Co-ordinators or Youth and Community Outreach Workers?
i did mate - i thoughtit wozan act of gross discrimination against me personally
loved jezabel's comment on the one show. laugh? me 'n ozzie nearly pissed our right honourable fucking selves. sam had to change our nappies at least twice - you should have seen their fucking faces. strike? direct hit more like - political correctness just got fucking nuked bwoy. it was obviously a silly thing to say and i am sure that if you lined-up the civil-service staff membership against a wall and gave dirty jerry an automatic firearm, he wouldn't even be tempted to finger the trigger.
03:02
may i say something?
yes, tho' i assess the performance myself, it was a complete rout of the self-righteous whingeworn cuntfaces who run tings thesadays. the man verbalized what millions of us think about these prissy irreproachable sanctimonious public servants (even the most efficient of whom are mostly only in it for the money) as we suffer their condescending service on a daily bloody basis. look here, many self-employed people earn half the wages these guys screw yet get none of the retirement, sickness, and holiday benefits that these uncivil bloodsuckers claim out of public taxes.
indeed, i sincerely believe that this water-shedding episode can only end in one of two epiphanic ways: either there will be a coup of the prevailing establishment and clarkson will become prime minister, or he will be burnt at the stake by a liberal lynch-mob and later ceremonially beatified in canterbury cathedral by archbishop ramsey.
although i would probably not agree with many of this fellows private views, i think it was pretty bloody obvious that he was joking - it was all about as predictable as the outcome, back in yesteryear, of giving poor old georgie best a bottle of whiskey and a comfy spot on the sofa of a live chatshow...and for their next trick i daresay that the producers of the one show will put their collective heads inside a lions jaws...can't wait. of course he was bloody-well joking - and anyone who can't see that should be barred from public office through lack of intelligence (wit) and sensitivity). many of our state-workers are not interested in providing public service, but instead prefer pursuing power over the public, and self-service.
i'd be the first to say that clarkson made a deliberately insensitive joke and that john terry blurted out something racist during a game, but it's the nature of the animal, you see, and just their natural behaviour. ordinary people suffer hurt feelings from such unkind outbursts, day-in-day-out, and never expect to receive compensation or the protection of a public prosecution, they just complain or rebuke the offending oaf - it's how life goes on; such criminal cases are an immoral waste of public money and police time, time that would be far better spent clearing up all the unsolved and wilfully-ignored racial (or otherwise politically sanctioned) assaults and murders which litter the recent and present history of our hideously imperfect society.
incidentally, revoking the principle of double-jeopardy is an outrage against traditional english common-law and the common man - and encourages the police to be even sloppier and more corrupt than they ever have been; the police are meant, from the outset, to investigate every case properly, thoroughly and conscientiously, regardless of the race, creed or colour of the victim...and failure to act in accordance with this clear code should result in instant dismissal. the problem in the case of stephen lawrence was not the law, but the integrity of the law-enforcers, who deliberately flunked the investigation for reasons known only to themselves; now we are saddled with a judicial system which allows the authorities to bring an accused back to trial time-after-time-after-time until they obtain the result which our corrupt officialdom requires - the innocent individual is now at the mercy of the all-powerful all-convicting state, and i fear that an increasingly higher proportion its future innocent victims...will be black.
oh yes, free-speech is as essential to a functioning community as an exhaust-pipe is to a combustion-engine - block it and see...what happens...at your peril.
04:53
i take it that st jezzabel will be roasted by a fuel of his own choice...good old leaded 4-star, perhaps...or maybe the liberal middle-classes will insist on a sometning organic and renewable...such as nice fragrant olive wood chips...
yes, all joking aside, i'm with you on this one - furthermore we should not be forced to accept homosexuality as a principle, nor should people be prosecuted for using the word "poof", nor should homosexuals feel they must repress their feelings, and moreover, the police should come down on homophobic murder, assault and bullying like a ton of bricks.
i suppose when you talk about political murder you are including the many thousands of civilian lives which this country has taken so cheaply in the middle east and africa in order to secure discount oil deals - no wonder that, in our society, jokes about gratuitous death are so ubiquitous.
oh yes, by-the-way, there are many millions of people (often immigrants) who work on low-paid casual contracts for the public authorities, yet they have none of the privileges which these strikers seek to protect - these comfortable socialist strikers are the privileged few and, at a time when everyone else is being made to feel the pinch, they will be ignored as such. the strike was never going to alter the government's ultimately skint position.
04:53
as a civil-servant who has been on strike for over seventeen years, i suppose i should have some sympathy with the current malcontented mob, but my experience of self-employment, unemployment, and of suffering the largely condescending treatment dished-out by these public gangsters, has left me generally antagonistic and definitely disenamoured - let's face facts, government workers rob you of your hard-earned money, with menaces, and then expect you to be devoutly grateful for the often paltry, sub-standard service which they provide; fair enough, existing public workers who have put in a few years' legalized blackmail, and who are now being told that the goal-posts, terms and conditions are now to be changed, are bound to have a grievance with their employer - but, as i remember, strikes never had any effect on settlements, because, unknown to the shop-floor, the government and the unions already had the deal stitched-up right from the very beginning, and the hoo-ha was just for show. this dispute is a matter for the courts, in my reckoning, and it will be interesting to see whether the union leaders really fight their members' corner or simply buckle under the pressure of extra-large brown jiffy-bags loaded with solid silver paper-clips - but it's all academic really, judging by the emerging evidence of pensioners, who have paid-in their national insurance contributions from cradle-to-grave, and yet have been left starving to death on national health service hospital wards at the bitter end, i don't honestly expect there to be any dosh left in the kitty if and when when i reach my allotted pension-age...whenever the hell that may be...
04:53
the police are meant, from the outset, to investigate every case properly, thoroughly and conscientiously, regardless of the race, creed or colour of the victim...and failure to act in accordance with this clear code should result in instant dismissal.
i disagree, it would be more fitting if corrupt police received the sentence due for the murderers, whom they have protected.
15:24
fair enough, existing public workers who have put in a few years' legalized blackmail...
you mean extortion, surely?
yes, we must lock-up all these public criminals, we must wage a total war on crime - even if this may sometimes entail shooting ourselves in the foot or the head.
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