Owen Jones lauds the impending strikes this week. It’s the usual leftist bollocks from the teenage trot. He complains about low public sector salaries. Well, yes, now try being self-employed in the private sector. My income has fallen steadily for the past four years. Maybe I should go on strike? Oh, yeah, I would lose my clients, wouldn’t I?
Some of my clients will be affected by this strike. Driving examiners are supposed to be striking later this week, so folk will have taken time off work and paid for the day’s training only to be turned away. Yes, they can claim out of pocket expenses from the DVSA but who pays for that? Oh, yeah, we do. Great.
Driving examiners, like the rest of the public sector have steady employment, a reasonable (not brilliant, I grant you) income, a pension and they knock off by four in the afternoon. And they think they are hard done-by. Out here in the real world things are a little different. I was working over the weekend – I didn’t see any driving examiners about… Apparently ours don’t much like doing overtime. Okay, fair enough, but don’t complain about your lot (although, to be fair, I can’t say that the individuals here are doing that as they may be just going along with the strike because they are in the union). While some public sector employees may feel that their labour is worth more, it is we – the private sector – who have to fund it and I repeat, my income has gone down as well, so why should I fund increases for them?
Back in 1994, I was a signaller and I was involved in the strike that year. We settled in the end for pretty much what was on the table at the beginning of the dispute. The whole episode was a waste of time that caused damage to working relationships and achieved nothing. There was a time when striking did serve a purpose, when the unions’ function was vital for improving working conditions and this was the tool that was most effective. Those days are long gone.
Strikes serve no useful purpose (ask a miner…). They damage the striker, the employer and the customer. So, Owen Jones being a cheerleader for this highly destructive action is a cretin. A cretin who seems to think that it is still the nineteen-seventies.
The likes of Jones are always keen to tell us how government is a good thing, and mock those who think otherwise.
But apparently its poor employees need strong, politically influential unions just to be paid more than “poverty wages”.
Can’t help but feel there’s something of a disconnect there…
…and of course, these “poor employees” pay ever-increasing subs to said “politically influential unions” who show their concern for their members by using these subs (from those who supposedly can ill afford them) to pay their higher-ups something akin to 5 or 6 times the average wage…
Indeed. The union bosses are very much fat cats.
Owen Jones is a dick. Idiocy is way above his pay grade.
In spite of his being paid what I assume must be a reasonable salary for the task of presenting original and thought provoking perspectives on controversial issues (my Dad was a journo. he told me that) I have never seen Jones present any idea that was not straight-down-the-line politically correct wankerism. He’s earning money under false pretences.
But The Daily Telegraph got the message and booted a few writers who specialised in annoying readers (thus causing sales to drop even more). Maybe The Guardian will eventually work out that employing writers who piss off potential buyers is not good business and even businesses run by Trots need to break even.
Owen Jones is a cretin. He drones on about Thatcherism (which was only 25 years ago) as if he actually knows what he’s talking about. What I do know is that this idiot isn’t old enough to remember work-to-rule and the three day week in the 1970s, when the bloody electric was out half the week, when the shops were half bloody empty of food and when the Unions held Jim Callaghan’s balls in a fist.
It is almost like someone cloned Arthur Scargill’s DNA in a dish and made Owen Jones out of it. He looks like a bloody idiot when he drones on (and on and on) about Thatcherism as he was clearly about three when it happened. They only employ him at the Guardian to write articles because LaToynbee is spending so much time in Tuscany these days.