The Morning Rant

Sometimes you have to wonder. Against the current political climate, talk of widescale cuts and public sector pay freezes, Unison in Scotland this week voted against a 1.5% pay increase over 3 years (1% this year, nothing next and 0.5% the year after). I know this is below inflation and some people will genuinely struggle, but in all likelihood what they will end up with now is nothing. There will be little or no public sympathy for strikes at the moment, when everybody else has had to deal with cuts and redundancies, etc... striking for a bigger pay increase will not go down well.

I know this probably damages my left-wing credentials, but I never really claimed to be a true socialist anyway, but this is symptomatic of the problem I have with unions. In theory I think they're a great idea, but in practice they seem powerless to do anything when workers really are being exploited and are run, in general, by people who lurch to easily into an us-and-them mentality because it strengthens their own status rather than trying to work in a constructive way to resolve issues. (BA cabin crew, anybody?)

Combined with this we have Tony Benn's resistance to the coalition movement, backed by many prominent union leaders (who, by the way, line their own pockets through expenses, etc... far worse than MPs were caught doing) threatening mass protests and industrial action. I do like Tony Benn - I think he's an old school politiciam who often talks a lot of sense and will steadfastly refuse to toe any party-line, and I think resistance to the level of cuts planned by the government is to be welcomed. However, if this spills over into widespread industrial action a la 70s, it will play right into David Cameron's hands. If Labour become too closely tied to this through their archaic union links, they will be doomed at the next election and there will be a Tory landslide in regions of 1983 territory.

A final word about the cuts - I think talk of 40% cuts across all departments is a bit of a smokescreen. Its to make the real figure of 25% seem more palatable. Even then I doubt they will manage to achieve 25%, just as I doubt they will manage to eliminate the deficit in 5 years, but in aiming to do so they will at least hit Labour's target of halving it (which is probably more than Labour would have managed). Personally, I think that in reality the coalition will achieve cuts somewhere in the region of 15-20%, but even that is going to hurt a lot.