A government elected to absolute power by 23% of those entitled to vote, legislates that just to go on strike will require the support of 40% of those entitled to vote.
Update
I find further explanation is necessary. The government proposal is that not only must a majority of those voting cast their ballot in favour of a strike (which is democracy), but in addition that the number voting for the strike must also amount to 40% of those who were eligible to vote. Yet we have no such provision in a general election, where not only did the government get only 37% of those who did vote, it received under a quarter of the votes of those who were eligible to vote. the government is asking for a high
The right to withdraw your labour is the difference between a free man and a slave. Anybody who believes that the British economy has a problem with too many workers’ rights is very far right indeed. The gap between rich and poor had expanded massively in both private and public sectors, as the gap between workers’ pay and bosses’ pay grows ever wider.
In fact the first focus of the Tory government is on removing rights that protect ordinary people from their betters, be they human rights or employment rights.
I take it that you having to resort to the ad hom. approach means you:
a) Have no arguments to present.
and
b) You are not, in a cultural sense, British. The fact that I was taking the piss (a traditional British pastime) having gone completely over your head.
Still credit where it is due. That was almost funny. Have you thought of getting an agent rather than sitting there in the dark handling yourself?
The monopolistic power of unions to fix wages through strike action hurts the public by raising prices of goods and services. Moreover, there is no evidence that since the passage of the 1871 Trade Union Act strike action has has affected the overall wage level, which must be closely related to labor productivity.
What’s needed is a new Trade Union Act, that does the following:
(1) creates a closed shop in every industry, i.e., requires every worker to be a member of a trade union;
(2) fixes union dues at a low percentage of wages, e.g., 1%;
(3) outlaws strike action over wages.
The result would be the revival of the labour movement and the expulsion from the Labour Party of creeps like Blair, Milliband, etc., to be replaced mainly by candidates who have come up through the union movement and who are financed by the unions. The government of the UK would then be compelled to take labour interests into account in devising policies on immigration, international trade agreements, taxation, etc.
Abe
Nothing that the Tories ever did, do, or will do in future was, is, or will be for the ‘common good’. They have a mandate from their corporate and establishment paymasters to make damn sure that all their policies result in filling the coffers of the puppeteers that really run the country.
Just take a look at some simple stats. like UK debt levels and the growing numbers of super rich and think about it.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/15/wealth-inequality-uk-ticking-timebomb-credit-suisse-crash
-The UK did not just see debt grow, it also had the second largest growth worldwide in million-dollar-wealth households between 2013 and 2014. Almost 500,000 people tipped over that wealth bracket in those 12 months, mostly from sitting in property that was rising in value in London. This was a 30.5% increase in millionaires in a year, compared with a 14.5% rise in France, 14.1% in Germany and 13% in the US. The UK is out of step. –
How have we got from strikes to feminism? are the sheilas wearing the strides?
The posts from Jimmygiro make me feel I’m normal. That’s abnormal.
@Craig: “The right to withdraw your labour is the difference between a free man and a slave.”
Since feminism’s been menationed…Or “free woman”, Craig. Although perhaps ‘free person’ would be a more inclusive term to use as there are some people who identify outside of the gender binary.
What would you fellas do without a girl to make corrections and improvements to your blog, eh? What an earth would you do without me?! LOL:)
Anyone interested?
See to and from BLiar.
Publication of the Prince Charles ‘black spider’ letters: live
Follow this blog to see the revelations and reaction unfold after the release of the heir to the throne’s memos to government ministers
• No 10 hints at ministerial veto guarantee on publication of monarch’s letters
• Release of Prince Charles’s letters shows the point of freedom of information
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2015/may/13/publication-of-the-prince-charles-black-spider-letters-live
@Mary: “Try working in an establishment where females doing exactly the same job as the males, for the same number of hours, received 25% less in salary. I did, in the 80s.”
Unfortunately, it’s still very much going on, Mary. There are signs that the gender pay gap is even getting wider. My friend gets far less than her male colleagues for doing exactly the same job (actually more), plus she’s been with the same firm 10 years longer than them. What really took the biscuit was when her line manager hired a new guy (we think he was a mate of one of the management) to do exactly the same job as her and he automatically went in at a higher grade because her line manager said he was more experienced. On the very first day, this same manager runs up to my friend in a panic to ask her to train this new guy!
CanSpeccy
You mean, what you need wherever you are, is it Canada?. Here in the UK there are no workers, just unpackers of imported products, delivery drivers and installers. There is no manufacturing process that can be affected adversely by the withdrawal of labour. The contract-span of an unpacker who does not unpack as an agency worker is 0 seconds. The sell-by date of a delivery driver that does not deliver is yesterday. The installation date of an installer who will not install is never.
The fucking tories however placed a five-year contract on their term of political office supposedly because of the crisis in the economy which their very own bankers created by bleeding the banks with bonusses and interest.
How about a Zero Heroes Union set up as a statutory union with low fixed subs paid by the employers for all zero hours workers.
Fancy that. A woman.
Inge Lehmann: Discoverer of the Earth’s Inner Core
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/earth/p_lehmann.html
Dr. Inge Lehmann (1888-1993), discoverer of the Earth’s inner core. Photo courtesy of B.A. Bolt. Cut away showing the four main layers of Earth: solid inner core, …
It’s her birthday today hence the Google Doodle.
https://www.google.co.uk/logos/doodles/2015/inge-lehmanns-127th-birthday-5712482031108096-hp.gif
The Conservatives released an eight page document last year which detailed their hopes for changing our human rights in the UK.
It seems innocent enough, at least for the first couple of pages – our human rights are controlled by Europe, are open to interpretation by the Strasbourg Court, and the Tories want the UK to be in charge of its own human rights.
That may seem reasonable… but here’s what will effectively be scrapped by the Tories:
The right to life
The right not to be tortured
The right not to be a slave
The right to a fair trial
The right NOT to be punished if you haven’t broken the law
The right to private family life
The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion
The right to freedom of expression
The right to marry and start a family
The right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions
The right to education
The right to free elections
The right NOT to be given to death penalty
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/arguments-human-rights-act-michael-gove-repeal-myth-busting
Today I waived my right to claim back 15 hundred pounds of overpaid tax because HMRC demand RTI real time information monthly returns on PAYE to businesses, and 100 pound penalties for late filings.
I suppose i could give up visiting my family or looking at my garden to fill in their smelly online forms on my day off.
But I can think of better ways of wasting my time than changing HMRC’s smelly nappies.
Thank you Mark for that succinct analysis of what it means to be ruled by Tories.
Carers employed by agencies being one of the worst examples of exploitation.
This outfit is accused of not even paying the minimum wage.
Mitie faces new minimum wage claims
Mitie has been accused of not paying carers the minimum wage
The BBC has learnt that Mitie’s chief executive will meet government officials to respond to claims that it has not been paying the minimum wage.
The company owns one of the largest care providers in the UK.
In March, the BBC and Corporate Watch revealed that Mitie’s MiHomecare was not paying the minimum wage to home care workers in two Welsh branches.
But we can now reveal evidence that suggests the company is not paying the minimum wage to some carers in England.
Several former and current MiHomecare employees in Devon and Surrey have told Corporate Watch, the investigative organisation, that they are not being paid for the time it takes to travel between clients and they are encouraged to cut visits short.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32715728
The company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitie
The CEO Ruby McGregor-Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_McGregor-Smith
Annual salary £1,447,266
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=8303852&ticker=MTO:LN
She even got a place on the Holocaust Commission.
It will be a Cameron peerage next.
@ Giyanne,
“Here in the UK there are no workers, just unpackers of imported products …”
LOL
Canada is actually not much better, although we have a larger resource industry and a hyper-inflated property market that is keeping lots of fellas busy building fancy houses for the 1%, plus little skyboxes for the largely non-reproductive proletariat (it’s cheaper to import new workers as needed than have a citizenry with a multi-generational stake in the country).
But both the UK and Canada would see some recovery in manufacturing with the abolition of union wage bargaining — and abolition of the minimum wage, which insures idleness among those whose labor is worth less than the minimum wage.
The plight of the working poor should be alleviated by way of a negative income tax regime for those earning less than a living wage, the cost to be covered by a capital tax of one or one point five percent as in Switzerland.
Becky Cohen
13/05/2015 6:34 pm
That is an excellent point, and a perfect illustration of the unconscious bias of everyday language: of course that phrase should have read: “free person”, or perhaps “free individual”. That someone as liberal as Craig Murray can make such an error (because I am certain that had he noticed it he would have changed it straight away), emphatically demonstrates the need for a fundamental shift in the use of language: what is frequently jeered at as “political correctness”.
Only when the use of “person”, or a gender-neutral (colour-neutral, etc) synonym has gone so deeply below the average person’s consciousness that it looks really weird (to themselves and to others) to write “man” when you mean “person”, will I feel that matters are going right. I must admit that one slid past me, which I am not very happy about.
Kind regards,
John
Craig
I see you have deleted the words about the Executive having absolute power. But even “I am fascinated to know what check[s] there are on executive power in the Westminster system” is OTT.
To a greater or lesser extent:-
House of Lords (need to pass legislation).
Backbench revolts.
The Civil Service.
The UK courts.
Scottish and Northern Irish devolution (re HRA)
The European Union.
The ECHR.
Rupert Murdoch.
The rest of the Media.
The USA (need their permission to use our nuclear fireworks).
Don’t get me wrong, I am not enamoured with what the Tories are proposing. My objection was to your hyperbole about this. Even if it goes through unchanged the results will made it harder, not impossible, for strikes to be approved.
I do agree that it’s a strange priority for Cameron and co, even if they genuinely think it’ll achieve any useful aim. But there you go.
Numquam illigitimati carborundum.
Mr JimmyGiro, “With a double first in physics and chemistry”, maybe you can tell me what a ‘lazy eight’ is?
I’ve always wondered.
Likewise, maybe you can tell us about neutron bombardment?
> The right to withdraw your labour is the difference between a free
> man and a slave.
Let’s see if I have this right. If you’re a railway worker prevented
from striking while working for rich white men, you’re a slave.
Now let’s say you’re a B&B landlord not wanting to accommodate gay or
black people. You have the right to withdraw your labour in those
cases, because otherwise you’ll be slave.
Makes sense, yes?
CanSpeccy
(it’s cheaper to import new workers as needed than have a citizenry with a multi-generational stake in the country)
Are you sure you live in Canada, not Cambodia?
“Try working in an establishment where females doing exactly the same job as the males, for the same number of hours, received 25% less in salary. I did, in the 80s.”
If an employer can get a woman to do the same job as a man, but for less, why wouldn’t he or she?
By taking the job at less pay than an employer would have to pay a male for the same work, a woman deprives a man of a job. Isn’t that what feminists want?
Or if the employer pays a male more than a female just out of some kind of male chauvinistic preference, then that employer is an idiot and will likely soon be out of business.
Of course, if an employer hires a male because the best qualified person for the job is a male, then paying more for a male than a female (if necessary) is quite logical and any legislative attempt to force the employer to hire a less suitable person is simply idiotic.
As for man versus person, this is a silly and pointless debate. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “man” and “Man” as “A human being of either sex; a person…”
@ Giyanne
“Are you sure you live in Canada, not Cambodia?”
Why Cambodia, do they import a lot of labour?
Apparently not.
Canada receives 5.66 migrants per 1000 of population (twice the UK rate) versus minus 0.32 for Cambodia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate
Sandy Toksvig and Catherine Mayer have co-founded the Women’s Equality Party. Launching in September.
2 May 2015
Sandi Toksvig’s Women’s Equality Party is a movement for which time has come
With at least half the electorate potentially very interested in achieving parity, politics had better start taking Women’s Equality seriously
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sandi-toksvigs-womens-equality-party-is-a-movement-for-which-time-has-come-10221200.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Womens-Equality-Party/1567955710156124
Can Speccy Did you read my post about Mitie?
RobG
Lazy 8
Tory infinite cash cow system. Does not require workers:
1/ Banks lend paper money
2/ Banks remove real cash from customers real money through charges and interest.
3/ Banks sell loan to third party to lighten their own liability and pay profits to bankers as bonusses.
4/ Bankers increase values of property and businesses.
5/ Banks sell property and businesses
6/ Banks create crash. Lack of confidence. Failure of loan insurance to deliver recoupment of losses. 50% cut in capital returned to customers 50% fall in property values.
7/ Print Quantitive Easing
8/ Bankers buy property and businesses
Back to 1/ again.
CanSpeccy
You seem to imply that all women in the work place must automatically be ‘feminists’. Then must we assume therefore that all men in the work place are automatically chauvinists? This is clearly ridiculous. More illogical reasoning that can only be put down to another case of chronic misogyny.
@ RobG
“I’ve always wondered.”
If you don’t know these things after ‘all that wondering’, what use would it be for anybody to tell you?
All that would happen is that you’d either lose the sense of wonder, or simply refuse to understand, and continue wondering.
Canada used to belong Inuit until some criminals/paupers/adventurers were deported/forced to flee/ran away from debtors/etc from England. These ne’er-do-wells went there and settled in that lovely clean place and now these immigrants with an attitude believe they own the bloody joint.
How is the genocide coming along? You are still posting shite, so it must be going at a glacially slow pace.
‘Morning Star editorial; Workers Suffer in Tory Britain
BBC political correspondent Eleanor Garnier was positively gushing on yesterday’s 1pm news bulletin about David Cameron’s description of the Tories as “the real party of working people.” ‘
‘The fact that both Garnier’s father and his cousin are privately educated Tory MPs might colour her perception of normality.’
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-1e23-Workers-suffer-in-Tory-Britain#
Her father is Edward Garnier, MP, a barrister and ex Solicitor General. Her Daddy’s income extra to his parliamentary Wonga. £thousands and thousands.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10221/edward_garnier/harborough#register