A few days ago, parts of the public sector chose to strike. The Daily Mail suggests that the public sector strike was not as successful as anticipated whilst some of the BBC’s early web news headlines implied a “mass” turnout. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction ? I am sure the Daily Mail has a bias in its coverage but so has our allegedly impartial State Broadcaster surely?
STRIKING A BALANCE?
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Even if half the country went out on strike, the Daily Mail would not count it a success.
But presumably you would.
But they didn’t did they in fact not even close to the claimed figure , just a tiny minority of militant dinosaur public sector workers who absolutely no one missed lol !
Whilst the BBC were saying there was a mass turnout, there was an aerial picture of the get-together in Trafalgar Square at the conclusion of the march through London. We were told this would be the mass collection point for big speeches etc.
Lets put it like this. There was a lot of concrete visible from the air.
In reality, the true figure was probably somewhere in between what the Mail and the BBC claimed. Fact is, there will always be a hard core protest group who can be relied upon to turn out whatever the matter at hand is. As such, protester numbers mean very little.
And how do we know the marchers are all ‘workers’ anyway? A lot of them looked like your average identikit anti-fracking great unworked and unwashed.
You mean The Usual Suspects, aka The Great Unwashed. They bus in for every Lefty Demo, whatever it is for, and the more destructive to the country the more they like it. Most of them have never done a day’s work in their lives, they treat it as an unmentionable four letter work to be avoided like the plague.
For example, according to teachers I know, the NUT laid on six free buses to London for the big anti-Iraq war demo – just from Bradford.
Interesting. When I was at Bradford University in the 80’s, the NUS used to provide free buses to ship students to London for demos. I knew of many fellow students that used to take the opportunity to have a free trip to the capital and spend the day shopping.
During the sixties I studied at Leeds University and it was also common there for regular coachfuls of lefties to go down to London in order to demonstrate. The good part of this was that the coaches often returned half empty as half the idiots were languishing in the Met’s cells awaiting trial on the Monday morning. Ah happy days!!
On the day of the strike the BBC repeatedly stated how public sector pay rises had been restricted to 1% for 3 years and, in the words of Jonty Bloom on the Today programme this amounted to ‘a year on year pay cut’.
Yet again the finest investigative journalism in the world is unable to unearth a basic fact, even from their own website, that the majority if not all of public sector employees are on incremental pay scales so only those who are underperforming or at top of scale have been restricted to 1%.
Despite the two year pay freeze announced by George Osborne in 2010, some workers are enjoying rises under a process known as pay progression, the Financial Times reported.
The rises range between 2% and 5%, it said, as staff moves along pay scales.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19404267
Not to mention public sector wages continuing to outstrip those in the private sector:
Public sector workers are still earning up to £3,200 a year more than their private sector equivalents.
Even after a three-year squeeze on the millions employed by the state, they continue to enjoy an average ‘pay premium’ of more than six per cent, a report reveals today.
In some parts of the North East, Merseyside and the South West, public sector workers are paid as much as 14 per cent more – or £3,200 a year on average.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453494/Public-sector-wages-outstrip-private-3-000-Workers-receive-average-6-pay-premium-despite-year-squeeze.html
Not to mention their superior pensions:
Public and private sector workers are separated by a “pensions apartheid”, experts said last night, after an official report showed a gaping disparity between the retirement benefit packages on offer.
It found three in four people who still hold a “gold-plated” pension work in the public sector, following a sharp decline in the number of people with a generous scheme.
The total number of people with a so-called final salary pension – which typically provides two-thirds of a worker’s last pay packet in retirement – has fallen by 1.3 million in the past six years, according to the Office for National Statistics.
However, this decline was almost exclusive to the private sector, where scheme memberships fell from three million in 2006 to just 1.7 million today, the ONS said.
By contrast, workers in the public sector have kept their generous retirement benefits. A total of 5.1* million state employees are still in line for this type of pension – no change from the figure in 2006.
Mind you, rather than shite journalism, it could just be the BBC would rather hide these inconvenient truths….
Did anyone really take much notice? I can’t say it registered with me that the strike had taken place, but then I hadn’t been subjected to what I suspect was the usual hype by the bbc, championing the unions. Or for a change, did they actually give a fair and impartial report?
I noticed, first my local indoor market was closed because the men who hold the keys are council workers and some 150 traders were forced to lose a day’s income. Later I noticed again when I had to queue behind a gaggle of striking firemen at my local pub. The pub manager wasn’t complaining though.
Our “recycling” was picked up two hours later than normal on Friday!
They must have time to spare on a normal week!
Never known a fireman that didn’t have a second job. One pair even ran their own kitchen/bedroom refitting business, complete with large workshop and showroom.
In that link just look at those idiots dressed up as zombies – do these people ever actually grow up?