After a long Absence, I find Chaos

Goodness, it's been almost 2 years since I last blogged. Why? because I got a job. You'd think that the kind of job that could cause me to be so tired that I stopped blogging about politics, the nefariousness of the papers and the terrifying craptitude of the voting public would be some kind of megajob, where I get to jet around the country for squillions of quids. I wish. Instead, it was a minimum wage shop job that saw me out at work for 9 hours every day and utterly fucked at the end of them (and not in the good way). Now I've been made redundant - a sign of the times - I seem to have more time to read the news and get angry about what I see in it.


The strike seems to be the big thing that is looming up, #N30 on Twitter, the biggest strike since the seventies. If you don't already know, the government decided at some point to fuck over public sector workers' pensions, including messing around with money many had already paid into the system, so that they would now have to work longer, pay more, and get less at the end of it. That's basically it in a nutshell. 


Suddenly, phrases like 'gold-plated public sector pensions' start getting bandied about in the press, a phrase that gains momentum alongside fatuous comments about how private sectpr pensions are shit, so why should public sector workers, who are PAID BY THE TAXPAYER, get a better deal? This last is usually bellowed by some Mail reader with foam-flecked lips and swivelling eyes showing far too much white in the comments section of their favourite bullshit paper. Leaving aside the fact that private sector pensions are shit partly because of wealthy people stealing from them for years and undermining them to the point of uselessness, and partly because the private sector thinks it is clever to fuck over their workers completely and, after working them to death, doesn't believe they deserve the dignity of a pension, leaving all of that aside for now, figures emerged this week that show that the average civil servant on middle management wages (about £35k) will finish on a pension worth just £8k. An MP, who earns not even twice that salary ends with a pension of over £21k. Simple question that even the most rabid and fundementally stupid Express or Mail shouter can answer - which of those pension deals is the gold-plated one?  Are MPs taking a hit on their pensions? Are they fuck.


Equally hilarious (if it wasn't for the horrific consequences of dripfeeding bullshit to a willingly ignorant mass of readers) is the accusation that UNION BARONS FORCING STRIKE TO GO AHEAD, and NOTHING CAN STOP STRIKE NOW, all of this attributed to Brendan Barber, whose actual quote was, when asked if there was any chance that the strike would be averted, "Well, I think at this stage it's probably unlikely". So in that sentence we have "I think", "probably" and "unlikely", three words not often associated with the kind of decisive domineering that the media are trying to lay at the doors of FAT CAT UNION BARONS WITH GOLD-PLATED PENSIONS FALLING OUT OF THEIR ARSES. (The irony of Paul Dacre's Mail calling a £140k a year union boss a fat cat when Dacre banks over £2 million a year, and fuckwitted racist idiot Richard Littlejohn bags £750k for writing a couple of fetid, ill-informed rants a week does not escape me). In other words, this is the media blatantly lying in order to make Joe Public hate unions and hate strike action and hate public sector workers whose lives are so much better than theirs. 


The message the papers try to push is, basically, hate the person with the slightly better deal than you, don't dare to ask why you can't have a slightly better deal instead. No, drag everyone down to the lowest level so all workers are treated like shit, just like in the private sector. Add into this the way that the government is now in consultation about how best to strip workers of even more rights, including the right not to get sacked just because your employer doesn't like you, and the lot of the worker is about to get even worse.


 I say we get the private sector properly unionised, galvanise the low-paid, overworked workers. Strikes are pretty effective when done by public sector staff, but the effect of a strike in the private sector would be nothing short of apocalyptic - the economy would stand still if shops or banks closed for a day with only minimal staffing keeping them going. It would have the added bonus of hurting the real fat cats, the bloated company directors with seven figure salaries, where it hurts - in the profits. If you are a low paid private sector worker, go out now and join your union. Do it. Let's stop trying to drag down the public sector into the shit, let's try to rise up out of the shit and start forcing employers and the government to treat us with some fucking dignity. Don't accept the bollocks that the media try to feed you, read the facts, not the opinions.