[Closed] Winter of discontent approaching fast

Get to ****ing work and be happy you've got a job is what I say!

Disconsent? Does that mean it's going to be forced upon us?

It could snowball out of control and things could get a bit flaky.

now I'm not being funny but I couldn't see who posted this but I somehow guessed it was you project. seriously are you genuinely this negative about things? it's just that many of the posts I see you on you are hardly a ray of light. i'm generally very positive about life and find your general view a bit depressing. don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning your views because fair enough and all that but really? do you consider the world in general to be that bad?.

disconsent

univercity staff

Nice work 😉

Marcus, just pointing out the failures of the con dem government,and if you read all my posts like i do, youll find i offer a lot of help,advice, ad usually a hint of humour.

The only ray of light is that the con dems will loosee the next election,look forward to that.....

Well RM going on strike will hardly bring the country to its knees, just speed up replacing more of them with machines / outsourcing.

As for the Grangemouth refinery, it's making such large losses that it is pretty inevitable it will be shut down, unless the Unions concede something significant. There was an article in the Sunday Times basically saying the Unions tried to shaft the owner when he was in severe financial trouble a few years back and this is pay back for that (not withstanding it's also a loss making site). You reap what you sow etc...

In fact none of the strikes will have any real affect on the country....

if you read all my posts like i do, youll find i offer a lot of help,advice, ad usually a hint of humour.

now that's funny!
ahha hahhhahhhaa hahahhah hahhha 😀

I think it's only a matter of time til there's more dancing in the streets tbh but it won't be to do with royal mail and ineos strikes.

yeah I get that but I just find it hard work, like the Chester thread where you made some negative remarks at first then some good advice!. I just hate the idea of a fella that lives relatively close not being able to see the good stuff in life!. I can't honestly say I've read all your posts so maybe I'm just picking up on certain ones!. just had to say something really! 🙂

Both negatives and positives in Chester, i was just pointing out both sides of the city.

The whole point of a forum discussion is you get to put your point accross, some agree some disagree, its not a yes man state run forum, where people are affraid to say something a bit different and get others minds working.

Now back to strikes.

well I've seen my fair share of strikes since the 70's and all that seems to have happened is the unions have become weaker... infact I can't honestly remember when they have helped. if you want me to be honest IME most people just don't care and be that due to media reports or apathy people have become or maybe always were not generally interested in things outside their immediate worlds. STW appear to be far more interested in such matters and I sometime think that they are often in the minority of the population. Ive seen it on here where peoples interest in a teachers struck doesn't go beyond the personal inconvenience it causes. Any and all strikes will I reckon be essentially be ignored by the majority as it will not affect them in any significant way and life will carry on. the unions are so restricted now and the media no longer supports them ( not that they did) that the impact can at best be minimal. IME you have to go way into the past to get to a time when the unions had a real voice and one that was to be reckoned with which even though I'd never join a union is a shame.

marcus7 - just think how even more ineffectual the unions would be if the Labour governments hadn't used their 13 years in power to roll back all that Tory anti-union legislation.

Oh... hang on.

the british trades unions are there own worst enemies.. why on earth dont they keep there members contributions till the elections are over then roll up with a brown paper bag to the desk of the winner.. then they d have influence no matter which party was in power..

what on earth have they to strike about..

a country where more people than ever are in work where the number of claimants for benifits fell at its sharpest for 16 years where inflation is amongst the lowest in the developed world where the income tax bill for your first 10 grand is NOWT... did all this happen under ed millimuppet or the condems.. look at what a mess nice but dim gordon left us in.. was that soooooo much better..

In fact none of the strikes will have any real affect on the country....

a country where more people than ever are in work where the number of claimants for benifits fell at its sharpest for 16 years where inflation is amongst the lowest in the developed world where the income tax bill for your first 10 grand is NOWT.

Wow, that's a rather romantic view of this country. Having "one of the lowest inflation rates in the developed world" and " more people in work than ever" etc, are not a lot to shout about when you dig a little deeper.

Have you seen what postal workers are demanding, legally binding guarantees of job security and conditions into the future to avoid joining the so called race to the bottom for wages etc. The only race they'll be joining will be for the job centre, why do they think the condems were so keen to get shot?

Don't be so sure you'll get shot of the dems at the next election, there's a fair chance they'll be forming the liblab flip flop coalition with Ed Millmutt.

[quote=stumpyjon ]
Don't be so sure you'll get shot of the dems at the next election, there's a fair chance they'll be forming the liblab flip flop coalition with Ed Millmutt.
And what difference will it make? What did gorgeous George call them - 3 cheeks of the same arse?

None probably, or about as much difference as the strikes are likely to make, ie those involved will become even more disliked.

Are they not just maintaining the same strike rate as under a labour government?

If there's a 3 way split next election it's more likely to be Tory/UKIP/Lab than Tory/LibDem/Lab. I suspect one party will have an overall majority though, that's the usual outcome - whatever happened in 2010.

The super unions of the 70,s and 80,s those that had real power who could slow the country down, like the power workers, the coal miners,local authority workers .bin men etc and firemen, followed by the bus workers and car plants, all split up or paid off.

The strikes that are going to happen will just inconvenience a lot of people but have little effect on con dem plc, the strikers will just be split up, made redundant or sacked replaced by those hungry for a job,thosdse that are curently branded scroungers,workshy etc.

Do you remember the seventies or the early eighties? Have you ever had mortgage rates at 17%? In comparison this is a soft prosperous time. And things are getting better - slowly and not equally every where, but definitely on the up. I feel the next thing is more likely to be "loads a money" rather than "winter of discontent".
Hurrmph!

But in the 70`s a lot of us didnt have mortgages we rented off the council, or private landlords, savings rates where high for those who saved, people seemed happier and there was freindship and comaraderie in work places, now its all back biting and bitching in a lot of places,petty minded management imposing daft rules just to find ways of sacking people.

There will and always will be loads of money for those who start off with loads of money,for a lot of us its a struggle.

Was the 70's not also the time where if you disagreed with the unions you would be better off leaving anyway, striking in support of people you had never met or had no view on their issues but you were told to strike.

It seems like your memories are rose tinted...

I'm pissed off because we had a big massive LCD TV when I was a kid and now I can't afford one.

When you say saving rates were high, you're really saying inflation rates were high, which ultimately robbed savers of their savings. I live in a in a very mixed community with a high level of minorities and disadvantage. Its as happy now if not happier than anywhere I lived in the seventies (which were generally more advantages communities - rural and city - than where I live now).
Are you really old enough to compare?

striking in support of people you had never met

You mean there was a time when people weren't just motivated by personal greed ?

legally binding guarantees of job security and conditions into the future to avoid joining the so called race to the bottom for wages etc

would you like to take a bet with me about what will happen to postal workers terms and conditions over the next 10 years ?
Better or worse than current and especially for new joiners.
Would you?

It seems like your memories are rose tinted..

Gowrie - Member

In comparison this is a soft prosperous time. And things are getting better - slowly and not equally every where, but definitely on the up. I feel the next thing is more likely to be "loads a money"....

Now there's one very happy and satisfied voter.

There's not many of those about.

Roll on the demise of the condems

Is that a good idea, given the likelihood of power cuts and that we've already got a rising population?

To anyone who thinks the UK's rubbish, why don't you spend some time out of your first world bubble and get a bit of perspective on how it is for the rest of the world?
Try popping across to one of these places and complain about how crap your first world life is:
China, Russia, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, South Africa (most of Africa tbh) India, Japan, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Somalia, North Korea...
All of these places are either massively poorer, much higher unemployment, corruption, lack of democracy or basic freedoms, lack of proper healthcare, basic infrastructure etc etc

So Broken Britain was a Tory lie then ?

Or are you saying that they've already fixed it ?

brooess - Member

To anyone who thinks the UK's rubbish, why don't you spend some time out of your first world bubble and get a bit of perspective on how it is for the rest of the world?

Nah, how about we look at it on its own merits? You don't have to give up all ambition for a better and fairer nation for your kids just because somewhere else has it worse, especially when the things we can (should) do won't negatively impact those less fortunate.

strikes my ass. when people get seriously ****ed off enough with socio-economic inequality they just start burning their High Streets to the ground and raiding footlocker and PCworld for what they percieve to be materialistic answers. What needs changing is the whole idea system of value.

Meanwhile we are told that unemployment has hit the lowest level since 1997. If that's to be believed, something is going right. Export is what is driving employment, my own company near Bury is breaking records almost every month and building a £5m new factory to cope with the work. In that kind of environment unions are an irrelevance and strikes are a symptom of workers' own exaggerated feeling of self-importance.

What's the breakdown of that employment?

Does that include part time and zero hours? What's happened to disposable income levels? What's going on with those in employment that claim benefits?

Not rhetorical, btw.

Well I'm on strike.

Meanwhile we are told that unemployment has hit the lowest level since 1997.

Unemployment is at its highest level since 1997 would be a tad more truthful.

Look at the unemployment graph at the bottom of this page :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10604117

In that kind of environment unions are an irrelevance....

What sort of environment is that, one of rising wages and standards of living ?

There's some Tory spin at its finest on this thread.

And even if you are in work, you might still be in poverty.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24553611

we are told that unemployment has hit the lowest level since 1997. If that's to be believed, something is going right

The only ray of light is that the con dems will loosee the next election,look forward to that.....

Oil refinery workers where due to strike in Scotland, but called it off, so management still close down the refinery for a while,possibly to make sure they show who is in charge,

Seems unlikley, they'll have planned to shut down, and not everyone being on strike so will probably be doing turnarround work upgrading and replacing plant to make the most of the down time. The contracts for all that work will have been long ago signed so it was shutting down regardless.

totalshell - Member
a country where more people than ever are in work where the number of claimants for benifits fell at its sharpest for 16 years where inflation is amongst the lowest in the developed world where the income tax bill for your first 10 grand is NOWT... did all this happen under ed millimuppet or the condems.. look at what a mess nice but dim gordon left us in.. was that soooooo much better..

yeah its a paradise right now

going to Uni means more debt than ever before

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/17/working-poor-cuts-social-mobility-commission

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24553611
/p>

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hungrier-than-ever-britains-use-of-food-banks-triples-8882340.html

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/16/warning-crisis-nhs-mental-health

piemonster - Member

What's the breakdown of that employment?

Does that include part time and zero hours?

Takes no account of underemployment, so is pretty much meaningless.

going to Uni means more debt than ever before

Yep, in a time of record youth unemployment that's dead easy.

What Northwind said.

We should be thowing students into university right now, what's the cost of housing benifit etc for a kid in a Zero hours McJob on minimum wage versus the cost of sending them to university?

Aprentiships maybe, but my perception was the few available are massively oversubscribed (whilst engineering courses at university are struggling to fill up).

p.s. the real issue with the Inneos strike is what would happen to the BP Forties facility next door which really would be an issue if closed.

thisisnotaspoon - Member - Quote
What Northwind said.

We should be thowing students into university right now, what's the cost of housing benifit etc for a kid in a Zero hours McJob on minimum wage versus the cost of sending them to university?

Matching skill shortages to training & education funding would be better.

So don't go. Many should be encouraged NOT to go, and take up job, apprenticeship or college training with direct, practical skills.

did you read your previous post, have you read about the cuts to further education?

Why? There is already a generation who were conned into going to university getting into debt to find there were no jobs, why push more into it?

I'm guessing TINAS meant that universities should be free/subsidised like they used to be. A job may not be guaranteed but a more educated population can not be a bad thing.

mikewsmith - Member

Matching skill shortages to training & education funding would be better.

It would- but would still leave us with the basic problem jobseekers>number of jobs. Worrying about the route to unemployment kind of misses the point.

@Northwind but wouldn't it be better not to saddle them with debt and a degree in nothing very useful just to delay them into the workforce

Mikewsmith

Being on benefits is habit forming so its best if people are doing something vaguely worthwhile. Having said that real alternatives to A-levels and degrees would be a better option.

Maybe. Maybe not. You're still far more employable (and more widely employable) with most degrees than with most college qualifications, and you have a wider pool of likely job opportunities.

Work experience makes a huge difference though and that's hard to judge now with school-leaver or college-leaver work being harder to come by (it used to be pretty simple, if you did a degree then went into non-graduate work you were usually worse off than if you'd gone to college and started work earlier, now, not so clearcut)

Further education is fairly wonky in this country now imo (though, it's not my field so that's not the most informed IMO). Just seems like it's pointing in the wrong direction, and instead of fixing the problems we're cutting it further saying "It's not working, let's make it worse".

The question of debt's now a ridiculously complicated one. But here in civilisation, you don't have to pay for your degree 😉 In RUK, real terms, being long-term unemployed with or without a student loan isn't so different.

Anyone got a link to that plug in that blocks selected forum member's posts?

Seems unlikley, they'll have planned to shut down, and not everyone being on strike so will probably be doing turnarround work upgrading and replacing plant to make the most of the down time. The contracts for all that work will have been long ago signed so it was shutting down regardless.

Nope, they're playing hardball with Unite and showing that they are happy to shut the plant. This weakens Unites position as all Unite can do is threaten to strike, which shuts the plant. So, they have shut down the plant regardless with a cold stop, just to show Unite that they will close it for good unless they get the concessions they want.

just dial 0800Don'tbotherreading

footflaps - Member

So, they have shut down the plant regardless with a cold stop, just to show Unite that they will close it for good unless they get the concessions they want.

Pretty much. Ironically, Ineos have gone on strike.

I suspect this has more to do with cracking down on benefit cheats and proliferation of part-time jobs

A study conducted by the DWP in 2006 showed that around 130,000 claimants in total were subject to sanction referral in a year. These latest figures are seeing figures of over 110,000 in a single month.

From April 2000 to October 2012 there has been a total of 3,192,910 sanctions where a decision has been made over whether the claimant’s benefit should be stopped for a fixed period. The fact that two and a quarter million of those sanction referrals have been recorded should be cause for serious concern as to the vigour at which they are being applied.

As for training. I often hear this and it is not hard to see why folk think this is the solution though think about it for a minute

What are the industries that are booming in the UK with a huge shortage of qualified staff that anyone who trained in would walk into a job...anyone ...what is this magical career training?
Is industry screaming that there ar enoit enough graduates? Doe sanyont think that 50% of jobs are for graduates and that thi snumber is desirable. Education has become little more thna a cash cow for the industry tbh
Look at colleges and the explosion in forensic studies [ as one example of hundreds] at college and uni - this comes at a time when we cut the labs from 3 to 2 - it employs next to no one as an industry. i would imagine we get about x 100 or even more qualifications each year than there are jobs so training per se is not the solution as there are no jobs.
its pointless to think that education is the solution its not employment is. Education may support this but it wont cause it.
The reality is young people still want to do child care, hair dressings, beauty therapy, construction, motor vehicle etc. i would estimate that in excess of 85% of these never work in the industry and as less than 5 % actually have a career in it.

Education is excellent but it wont create jobs or employment except for the education sector.

[url= http://www.ey.com/UK/en/Issues/Business-environment/Financial-markets-and-economy/ITEM---Forecast-headlines-and-projections ]The case against, from the ITEM Club[/url]

not an economist but all the ITEM club is saying is that as house prices rise consumers can spend more, isnt that all just based on building up more debt??

It seems like a rosey outlook if you are already a homeowner but otherwise- for the underemployed and young out of work?

wages are still barely rising, certainly not keeping up with inflation, gas prices just been raised by 8-9%

so we are consuming more yet earning less

I suppose all that matters is that its sustainable until after the next election

kimbers - Member - Quote
not an economist but all the ITEM club is saying is that as house prices rise consumers can spend more, isnt that all just based on building up more debt??

Oil refinery workers where due to strike in Scotland, but called it off, so management still close down the refinery for a while,possibly to make sure they show who is in charge.

Shows how much you know - it takes a week or more to shut a refinery the size of Grangemouth down.

Ineos had initialised shut-down procedures as a contingency in case Unite decided to strike. As it happens, they've called it off but not before the point of no return in the shut-down procedure had been reached.

So it's nothing to do with Ineos showing who's in charge - it's the muppets in Unite playing their silly little pseudo-communist games.

Winter of Discontent (note spelling)? Yeah right, get back to your Daily Fail...

the number of people living in properties that are probably valued(or perceived to be valued) at way over their real life value is a problem.

unless you plan to move it is largely irrelevant whether my house is worth one million or £2.50 as i still need a home.

Its obvious that it will burst at some point as the price of a starter home is above the point at which folk can enter the market
No point having a house worth more than what people can afford to pay

johnellison - Member

Ineos had initialised shut-down procedures as a contingency in case Unite decided to strike. As it happens, they've called it off but not before the point of no return in the shut-down procedure had been reached.

So it's nothing to do with Ineos showing who's in charge - it's the muppets in Unite playing their silly little pseudo-communist games.

Oh come on, there's a veneer of truth on that but that's all. Ineos set the timescales, they refused to go to ACAS until it was so late that the shutdown was inevitable, so that's undeniably on them not Unite. So while it's true that the talks didn't reach a conclusion fast enough to stop the shutdown, that's because Ineos planned it that way.

And now that the plant's shut, they're refusing to restart it, even though the strike has been called off. I'm sure they'd like us to think that's Unite's fault but it's not even sabre rattling, it's sabre stabbing. If Unite were to do what Ineos are doing, it'd be illegal.

And that's leaving aside that the strike wasn't about pay or pensions at all, so Ineos's attempts to conflate it with profitability/costs is absurd- that'd be the case even if Deans hadn't already been cleared of the offence for which he was suspended (and don't forget, the Police also reviewed the evidence and concluded that there was no grounds for an investigation).

My bet is Ineos will close the plant, they hold all the cards, but Unite is too stubborn / stupid to realise it.

it's the muppets in Unite playing their silly little pseudo-communist games.

Winter of Discontent (note spelling)? Yeah right, get back to your Daily Fail...

Looks like George Osborne quite likes "pseudo-communists", yesterday he declared :

[url= http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-osborne-secondrate-britain-needs-to-be-more-like-china-8890558.html ] ‘Second-rate Britain’ needs to be more like China [/url]

Quote :

[i]Britain is no longer great, is defeatist and unambitious and needs to be more like China, the Chancellor has said.

Dismissing suggestions that China has a “sweatshop” economy, he said he wished Britain would be more like the communist country.[/i]

The strange thing is that it's completely at odds with what his boss David Cameron thinks :

[url= http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/07/cameron-warns-africans-over-chinese-invasion/ ]Cameron Warns Africans over ‘Chinese Invasion’ [/url]

Quote :

[i]‘I believe the model of authoritarian capitalism [in China] we are seeing will fall short in the long term.

‘When people get economically richer they make legitimate demands for political freedoms to match their economic freedoms. This model is unable to respond.

‘Neither can it offer the confidence and stability needed for investment.’ He added: ‘If you are going to set up in business, you need to know that you can go to a court confident that a contract will be enforced objectively – including against the government.[/i]

The Tories really are staggeringly incompetent, they are totally incapable of joined-up thinking, they can't even sing from the same hymn sheet ffs.

But now at least we know, it's not just the "Daily Fail" which publicly trashes Britain, the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer is also prepared to do so.

You seem to have put a lot of thought and effort into that post ernie lynch, well done. Have you not thought of contacting your local MP with the same thoughts rather than some obscure mountain bike website that hardly anyones ever heard of? Apologies if you already have 🙂

The Tories really are staggeringly incompetent, they are totally incapable of joined-up thinking, they can't even sing from the same hymn sheet ffs.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/18/labour-demands-home-office-immigration-text-costs

[i]Labour has demanded to know how much the Home Office has spent on sending almost 40,000 texts to members of the public saying they should go back to their home country because they may have overstayed their leave to remain.
But the party was caught out as it tried to dismiss the anti-illegal immigration scheme as a gimmick, only for it to be revealed that the programme had been started in 2007 by the Labour home secretary John Reid.[/i]

😆

Zulu in most-predictable post ever SHOKKA!

Darcy:

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Ba$tard!!!!!!!!

Pipped at the post after 3 pages.

Mine's better though. 😉

I love it when your likes shows a sensitive side Zulu. 😀

How long do you think you'll last before a ban or a name change "for personal reasons"?

Well the firemen appear to have been bought out,so one less strike then.

Darcy

ninfan - Member

😆

I fail to see how your post is in anyway relevant to this thread Z-11, or why the Labour Party's hypocrisy and double standards are particularly amusing - care to explain ?

The reality is that the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer this week held up China as an economic model that we should aspire to, whilst his boss, the Tory Prime Minister, has specifically held up China as an economic model which no should aspire to.

The fact that the Labour Party is hypocritical doesn't in some bizarre way justify this very clearly muddled Tory thinking.

You'll have to tell me what's in the video Zulu. It's not coming up on my jellybone.

Anyway, how long so you think you'll last this time before you're banned again? I was confused as to why you were the last time to be honest. Why was it?