Wednesday 30 November 2011

George Smiley on Strike


Bit of a bugger when you take the wrong teeth to a meeting.

Was in such a hurry to get to a business meeting in Dorking yesterday that I grabbed my new bottom denture rather than the top one - the top being the one that hides the massive gap in my smile. Can't get used to the damned things and only put them in for meeting and greeting.

Still can't understand what today's public service strike is going to achieve. If you're serious you go on strike till you get what you want. A day of mild disruption that few will even notice (and even fewer actually support) will get you nowhere.

Listened to a teacher on the TV yesterday complaining that she'd been promised an index-linked pension based on her final salary and now the government is reneging on it. Sorry love, in the private sector the final salary pension went years ago and we never had index linked pensions in the first place - why, when we're all having to tighten our belts, are you a special case?

I guess I'm going to be vilified again for the above paragraph, but before having a pop, please come up with an alternative solution to the problem that will work. Unions are partisan, as indeed they are paid to be; they're not interested in equitable solutions. Governments, on the other hand, have to take a wider and longer view, as they're running a country (although that doesn't necessarily make them infallible).


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