THE TUC has drawn a line in the sand, and the smell of braziers will once more enter the nostrils as picket lines begin to assemble throughout the country. The government (rightly) is determined to cut public spending, for to do otherwise would leave this country in a perilous financial strait worse even than that of Greece.
The TUC says it appreciates the necessity of such cuts but that the Coalition is acting to vigorously, and too soon. This is the same position held by the last Labour government before they were trounced by the popular vote in May of this year.
The public sector in this country has grown to such an extent that it poses a threat to the private wealth creating sector; the very sector that pays the wages of the public sector. Such an imbalance in favour of the public sector can only spell trouble for a modern viable wealth producing economy.
We now have more civil servants employed in our various ministries in London, supposedly on our behalf, than at the height of the British Empire when most of the world was painted pink.
The public sector has to be minimalist. It is needed of course, but not on such a grand scale. For if any economy is to prosper, then it will do so within the wealth creating private sector. This, historically, is a bitter lesson learned by Russia as well as the Guardianistas favourite son, Cuba; especially after Fidel’s’ recent recantation of socialism. We are now told, for instance, that even that ‘Beast’ of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, is about to put his vote behind the Blairite David Milliband in Labour’s leadership battle.
If even Dennis can smell the coffee, what is wrong with this particular sense among our trade union leaders? Bob Crow for one wants us to return to the 1970s. He goes further, as Arthur Scargill did before him, than those class traitors at the TUC wish to go. There is a familiar pattern emerging here for someone who has lived long enough to have experienced it before.
Whether the TUC’s ambition for a campaign of disapproval via strikes and demonstrations will come to fruition remains to be seen. I hope that such an appeal at this week’s trade union conference will go unrewarded. For this country’s finances are in a perilous state and need to be put on an even keel.
THE SIZE OF THE public sector with their guaranteed jobs for life and generous publically subsidised pension to follow ( as well as all sorts of other perks) leave many in the private sector, whose pensions are vulnerable to diminishment, angry. Their anger is justified for they feel the public sector is being cosseted at their expense. If those working in the private sector have to conform to the whims of the market place, then why should the public sector be exempted, as the union’s seek to do.
Our wealth as a nation depends upon its creation and its fluency. The public sector, any public sector, in an advanced industrial economy where commodities of all sorts are traded and exchanged, depend upon private wealth creation to oversee their security. However, the great albatross around the neck of such ambition in Europe, but, in particular, the UK, are the Unions representing the public sector.
Those working in the public sector have to form part of the vagaries of the market place along with their colleagues in the private sector. Every day of the week in good as well as bad times, people in the private sector whose taxes are paying the wages of those in the public sector, are being fired and have to look for other jobs. In the private sector, jobs for life, if not unknown, are rare indeed.
THE COALITION NEEDS to reduce our deficit, and if they fail, we as a country will become a third rate economic nation. Our world-wide well regarded financial sector will evaporate and be transported to a more vigorous and sympathetic economy, possibly in the Far East.
We have been put, financially speaking, on the brink of a precipice by the last government whose Keynesian nostrums failed us with their talk of retarding the cuts to the public sector and leaving the deficit alone to grow for another year in the hope that the economy will be turned around and put us into surplus. By which time deficit reductions could take place.
What it amounted to was throwing good money after bad, which left the taxpayer with an ever increasing burden, and the country with ever greater borrowing.
Over the coming winter months, if what the TUC wants actually comes true, then this country will be transported backwards to a darker period in our industrial history when the trade union movement almost became the unelected government of this country. And as such, almost destroyed our international reputation until the rise of Margaret Thatcher – God bless her.
If everything goes to form, it will not be the first time that the TUC has seen itself as the unelected government of this country. The people and only the people can elect those they wish to govern them: and at the last election the majority of people voted Conservative, but without a sufficient majority to govern, which lead to the coalition with the Liberal- Democrats.
The unions had no part to play (constitutionally) in such proceedings and should have no part to play in the Coalition’s discussions. The unions are the backers and bankrollers, as well as the ideological brethren of the Labour Party. A situation Tony Blair sought to change when in government: but nevertheless a situation that Gordon Brown tried to protect.
THE ERA OF COMMUNISM has ended but today’s TUC seems to behave as if the class war is still in continuance. This country’s economy has to sort itself out. It has nothing to do with the Marxist concept of class conflict (as the likes of Bob Crowe Insist); but what is in the best interest of this island nation and its 60 million people.
Political ideology is the last thing this country needs to promote its recovery from its national debt. Yet the unions are once again determined to blame the ‘capitalist system’ for our current predicament.
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