Three Strikes, You’re Out

So the unions have gotten a little pissy about the Coalition Government’s plans to reform public pensions and have today called a series of strikes.

I know this post is written in haste, and perhaps not totally factually accurate. But this is an issue – the unions – that makes my blood boil and gets me impassionedly angry.

My response: grow up and stop being so selfish, and to stop living in some sort of fantasy world where the streets are paved with gold.

The teaching unions – the NUT and ATL are striking over changes to pensions. But where does that leave our children? These union folk don’t care – they’re only, selfishly, it seems, interested in their own pensions. Why else would such a sector be so protective of bad teachers? Where are the strikes about detrimental changes under Labour to the education system, changes that have left us way, way down the table in terms of reading, maths and science?

Why are there even teacher's unions in the first place? As Katharine Birbalsingh excellently puts it; emphasis is mine:

…but aren’t unions simply meant to protect the working man? Why on earth they have anything to say at all about the national curriculum or the existence of free schools is beyond me.

Apparently there’s also strikes over airport border control, bin men… you name it, they’re on strike. And what for? They’re believing a set of lies about the Government’s plans that will “take their pensions away”. Rubbish. Why should the public sector – already shielded massively from economic reality by 13 years of Labour get special treatment? Public sector unions are big, pushy and like to think they rule the roost.

Well, the great and good of British politics – the Conservative Party – they knew what to do. In the 80s, Margaret Thatcher smashed the coal miners union. Sure, it all seemed doom and gloom, but really, why should the taxpayer have supported an uneconomic, backward industry. T he world had moved on by the 1980s – but the traditionalist unions had not

On the London Tube trains, the RMT union paralyses any attempt to modernise how the train system is run – at the taxpayer’s expense, remember with strikes that inconvenience the people they’re paid to serve – the public.

The public, much to to the union’s delusion, do not support strikes. They realised long ago that our country was broke, and we needed to reign spending in. Unlike America, we have a government now that has some idea of impact of debt.

You never, ever get this sort of behaviour from well-behaved private sector unions – and their members were equally treated badly in recent times, with their pensions well and truly pinched by Labour. But do they cause disruption? No. Do they have an entire political party, albeit a completely discredited, two-bit-operation one? No. Do they take some form of perverse pleasure about causing as much misery and disruption as possible? No. It wouldn’t make good business sense.

What’s even more hilarious is the hypocrisy of the trade unions. 37 trade union leaders are paid over £100,000 a year from subs. They’re the ultimate in hypocritical champagne socialists – and are not to be trusted. And even worse, these union creeps are even letting themselves be paid for the taxpayer to do essential frontline services… but spend all their work time doing union activities. (TPA report)

Matthew Sinclair, Taxpayer’s Alliance (linked above) said:

“Trade unions leaders are fighting necessary spending cuts and plan disruptive strikes that are against the public interest. These union fat cats claim to speak for workers but it looks hypocritical when they take home whopping salaries at the same time as they criticise high pay elsewhere. Worse still, the union coffers that their pay comes from are boosted by millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, which makes it easier for them to offer these generous pay packets.”

Barons like Mart Serwotka – the very-very-expensive-champagne socialist at the helm of the Public and Commercial Services Union puts in his pension pot every year £26,000 alone – and his members earn in total annually just under, on average £22,000. That’s supremely hypocritical, is it not? Hypocritical and disgusting. This man – as they keep claiming the “Tory toffs” like David Cameron and the others in the Government – is really the one who’s out of touch with the rest of the people.

But do the unions care? No, they’re far, far too busy getting political about those “wicked Tory toffs”.

Class war. How, class. I think not.

Mr. Cameron, stand strong and repeat the victory of Margaret Thatcher. You must prevail over these unions; if you don’t, Britain will fall to the stranglehold of socialism, where private enterprise is scorned upon, where the hard work of the few is taken away to support and subsidise the lazy. That’s essentially what socialism boils down to.

That’s not the sort of Britain I’d want to live in.