Winter of Discontent --- Part Two

[Christmas Tree 4847]

So democracy's ok when it suits.

 

Having sat by idly while their puppets wasted billions and fucked the country up, the Labour grass root brigade now see fit to try and hold the elected government of the day to ransom.

 

I hope any self respecting teacher, nurse or fireman will tell this lot to fuck off.

 

Fucking unions.......Run by little hitlers like Brendan Barber whose never done a proper days graft in his life.

 

Harriet Harman, who condemmed widespread action while in power is now backing widespread strikes and unrest. You fucking lost you silly cow, the majority of polls show a country happy with the way the Tories are mending Britain.

 

Then theres Bob Crow. Fuck off Bob.

 

 

Be interesting to hear what the Millibands have to say because the voters will not forget another winter of dicontent. Labour will be out for years.

[Monkeys Fist 43097]

So democracy's ok when it suits.

 

Having sat by idly while their puppets wasted billions and fucked the country up, the Labour grass root brigade now see fit to try and hold the elected government of the day to ransom.

 

I hope any self respecting teacher, nurse or fireman will tell this lot to fuck off.

 

Fucking unions.......Run by little hitlers like Brendan Barber whose never done a proper days graft in his life.

 

Harriet Harman, who condemmed widespread action while in power is now backing widespread strikes and unrest. You fucking lost you silly cow, the majority of polls show a country happy with the way the Tories are mending Britain.

 

Then theres Bob Crow. Fuck off Bob.

 

 

Be interesting to hear what the Millibands have to say because the voters will not forget another winter of dicontent. Labour will be out for years.

Source?

[Christmas Tree 4847]

The coalition government remains popular with voters after 100 days, a new YouGov poll suggests.

 

The survey found that 43% of voters thought the new government was performing better than the last one, with just 26% saying it performed worse.

 

David Cameron's net approval rating stood at +20, with George Osborne on +7 and Nick Clegg on +5.

 

Sixty-two per cent of respondents thought the government would be able to cut the deficit

 

Covered by most major broadcasters a few weeks ago.

[Meenzer 15731]

"Broken Britain" is such a joke of a phrase. The kind of patronising guff that could only escape the lips of Tories and/or Little Englanders who've never actually met anyone lower-class or been in any kind of peril.

 

On a related note, it's been posted before and it'll be posted again, but this is still fantastic: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...-drunkards.html

 

Still, the olden days were better...

[Monkeys Fist 43097]

The coalition government remains popular with voters after 100 days, a new YouGov poll suggests.

 

The survey found that 43% of voters thought the new government was performing better than the last one, with just 26% saying it performed worse.

 

David Cameron's net approval rating stood at +20, with George Osborne on +7 and Nick Clegg on +5.

 

Sixty-two per cent of respondents thought the government would be able to cut the deficit

 

Covered by most major broadcasters a few weeks ago.

So, 57% didn't think they were better than the last one.

 

And, most major broadcasters isn't really a source.

 

No info on numbers polled, demographics etc.

 

Come on CT, straws being clutched a bit here ?

[Christmas Tree 4847]

The coalition government remains popular with voters after 100 days, a new YouGov poll suggests.

 

The survey found that 43% of voters thought the new government was performing better than the last one, with just 26% saying it performed worse.

 

David Cameron's net approval rating stood at +20, with George Osborne on +7 and Nick Clegg on +5.

 

Sixty-two per cent of respondents thought the government would be able to cut the deficit

 

Covered by most major broadcasters a few weeks ago.

So, 57% didn't think they were better than the last one.

 

And, most major broadcasters isn't really a source.

 

No info on numbers polled, demographics etc.

 

Come on CT, straws being clutched a bit here ?

 

 

Its no good, cant put up a good fight while laughing at Monty Python but when the majority of voters (in this you gov poll and similar polls) are happy with the way the government is tackling the mess left by Labour, what gives the unions (more importantly a few fat cats in smokey rooms), the right to heap more misery on the country.

 

I think most people just want the country putting right.

[Monkeys Fist 43097]

You've been on the Special Brew again haven't you, you naughty naughty Tory.

 

Mending Broken Britain?

[Kitman 2207]

The Tory Party will probably dodge all the big decisions anyway. Like what to do about binge drinking, drugs, the "war on terror", the British economy and so on. Still, I expect they'll find lots of money to spend on pointless foreign wars (paid for by cutting essential services), preach family values whilst taking it up the arse from junkie rent boys, sermonise the virtues of hard work and restraint whilst taking back handers from big business and fiddling their expenses, and so on. Throw in a large dollop of humbug patriotism at various points (whilst sucking America's cock throughout) and there you go.

 

They'll do well to get a second term. They're probably only having a honeymoon period because they're not Labour.

[Renton 22007]

The cuts haven't really even begun yet, come back with the polls this time next year and see what the public think of the government.

 

It's also noticeable that the tories are using the Lib Dems to front most of their unpopular decisions, I find it utterly bizarre how the Lib Dems have let this happen. I think Clegg will lose his seat next time and we will be back to a two party election, split along a North-South divide.

 

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

[Christmas Tree 4847]

Honestly i think he posts this guff to stir up the same old debate that goes nowhere because he's not got a clue.

 

How can a government "remain popular" when they didn't even have the votes to win outright.

 

Whats the news delay over there? Large scale coordinated strikes were only sanctioned at the TUC general conference yesterday. Its a very different and new debate. Dont come whinging though in a few months when the bins arnt being emptied, the dead are being stockpiled and theres no post going anywhere.

Edited September 14, 2010 by Christmas Tree

[AgentAxeman 189]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

[Christmas Tree 4847]

The cuts haven't really even begun yet, come back with the polls this time next year and see what the public think of the government.

 

It's also noticeable that the tories are using the Lib Dems to front most of their unpopular decisions, I find it utterly bizarre how the Lib Dems have let this happen. I think Clegg will lose his seat next time and we will be back to a two party election, split along a North-South divide.

 

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

Someone tell the prime minister.

[AgentAxeman 189]

"The TUC conference every September used to be one of the big set-piece events of the political calender. Union leaders wielded real power and influence.

 

As a young industrial correspondent I was on hand to record their various threats and demands, usually beneath a headline which read something like: ‘Storm clouds gather over gale-lashed Blackpool’.

 

Back then, the unions had the muscle to bring down governments. In the Seventies, the miners toppled Ted Heath and the kamikaze Winter of Discontent put Labour out of office for a generation.

 

When Arthur Scargill attempted a repeat performance in 1984, staging a year-long coal strike designed to remove Mrs Thatcher, he was roundly defeated.

 

After that, the rot set in for the TUC. The changing industrial landscape saw union membership collapse from 13.3 million in 1979 to barely half that today. By the end of the Eighties, the TUC was an irrelevant sideshow.

 

The big beasts of the trades union world are extinct; most them long since dead, although Barmy Arthur clings to life in a sort of delusional Norma Desmond limbo. It’s his union that got small.

 

A new generation of militants hankers for the glory days. And this week they think they see their chance.

 

The Coalition ‘cuts’ present them with an opportunity to rattle the Government’s cage once again. There was plenty of belicose bluff and bluster coming out of the TUC conference in Manchester yesterday.

 

Bob Crow, the neanderthal throwback in charge of the railwaymen’s union, the RMT, is in the vanguard of a campaign of threatened industrial action against reductions in public spending. As well as bringing the rail network to a standstill for the duration,

he is also calling for widespread civil disobedience.

 

He says he can see ‘Batman climbing up Number 10 and Spiderman climbing up Buckingham Palace’, as well as sit-down protests on motorways.

 

You can always rely on Bob to bring a comic touch to the procedings, although somehow I can’t see him shinning up Big Ben, dressed as the Caped Crusader.

 

Anyway, I thought Fathers 4 Justice had cornered the superhero market.

 

Someone should remind him that people who play on motorways tend to get run over. That’s not to say that there isn’t a genuine prospect of disruption.

 

In the short term, the unions may score some success in forcing the Coalition to rethink some of its more drastic proposals.

 

With a relatively modest majority, Mrs Thatcher was reluctant to take on the unions in her first parliament. Shortly after coming to office, she agreed to implement in full the findings of a commission which awarded pay rises of up to 30 per cent for public

sector workers. And she backed away from a confrontation with Scargill until she was ready for a fight on her own carefully-laid ground.

 

But the tide of history is against the unions. Back in 1979, men such as the train drivers’ leader Ray Buckton would stand on the steps of ACAS and announce menacingly that they couldn’t hold their members back.

 

Today, the question is whether the TUC’s leaders can take their members with them.

 

Bob Crow has already embarked on a guerilla campaign of short, sharp strikes on the London Underground. But he’s increasingly coming up against the law of diminishing returns as resistence among his members grows and more cross the picket lines each time.

 

Elsewhere, Unite’s campaign of strikes at British Airways has done more damage to its own members than to the airline.

 

In this economy, no one in work is going to give up their pay packet enthusiastically for the sake of a strike which might achieve nothing. Especially when they might find they don’t have a job to go back to.

 

It is telling that most union members these days work in the public sector. If they carry out their threat to wreak havoc, it might just give the Government the excuse it needs to cut deeper and faster.

 

Can he count on strikers: Bob Crow needs to realise members are resisting walk outs

 

Nor can the TUC count on the support of families facing up to the economic realities of life. Although people are worried about their personal circumstances, most accept that spending has to be cut if Britain’s monstrous budget deficit and long-term debt are to be reduced. Plenty of us are already doing it in our own household budgets.

 

If public services are disrupted on a 1979 scale — with the dead unburied and the dustbins not emptied — there will be a backlash, not against the Government but against those responsible. (Although, in the case of dustbins, how would we tell?)

 

My guess is that Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, knows all this. Brendan was the TUC press officer when I was on the industrial beat. He lived through the Eighties and is well aware that Scargill’s suicidal, politically-motivated strike accelerated the demise of the coal industry, as well as the union movement as a whole.

 

Industrial action, coupled with cheaper foreign competition, killed Britain’s motor industry, shipbuilding and the iron and steel industry, too. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost for ever.

 

Who’s to say that fate couldn’t befall staff across the public sector? In theory, there’s nothing to stop the Government outsourcing, say, the entire administration of the social security system to India.

 

Bob Crow talks about protecting the ‘most vulnerable in society’ but the real motive behind his enthusiasm for a new Winter of Discontent is, like Scargill before him, to bring down the Government.

 

Be careful what you wish for, Bob. If Polish workers are prepared to undercut British plumbers, they can just as easily be taught to drive trains."

 

From the Mail

[Renton 22007]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

They just lost less badly. Quite an achievement too considering they had the full force of Murdoch on their side, and were campaigning against a hugely unpopular PM in the midst of the deepest recession in peace time history.

 

This is one of the things that really bugs me. I can accept there is a need for a coalition even if in reality it has minority support (not many Lib Dem supporters left now). But what I don't accept is that the government has the mandate to make such huge and brutal cuts, or to make such fundamental changes to the NHS (changes which were not even part of their manifesto). I would say that a coalition has a responsibility to be more measured in their actions than they have been so far, no wonder we are facing a winter of discontent.

[Christmas Tree 4847]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

They just lost less badly. Quite an achievement too considering they had the full force of Murdoch on their side, and were campaigning against a hugely unpopular PM in the midst of the deepest recession in peace time history.

 

This is one of the things that really bugs me. I can accept there is a need for a coalition even if in reality it has minority support (not many Lib Dem supporters left now). But what I don't accept is that the government has the mandate to make such huge and brutal cuts, or to make such fundamental changes to the NHS (changes which were not even part of their manifesto). I would say that a coalition has a responsibility to be more measured in their actions than they have been so far, no wonder we are facing a winter of discontent.

 

 

We are facing a winter of discontent because of the wishes of several individuals such as the communist, Bob Crow. It is their decision to try and bring the country to its knees.

 

Its not like the poll tax where mass protests have taken place to unpopular government policy, this is a few extremely left wing old dinasoars wanting to change the country.

 

Very dark days ahead and once again it looks as though the Labour puppet masters are going to make us the sick man of europe.

[AgentAxeman 189]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

"They just lost less badly". Quite an achievement too considering they had the full force of Murdoch on their side, and were campaigning against a hugely unpopular PM in the midst of the deepest recession in peace time history.

 

This is one of the things that really bugs me. I can accept there is a need for a coalition even if in reality it has minority support (not many Lib Dem supporters left now). But what I don't accept is that the government has the mandate to make such huge and brutal cuts, or to make such fundamental changes to the NHS (changes which were not even part of their manifesto). I would say that a coalition has a responsibility to be more measured in their actions than they have been so far, no wonder we are facing a winter of discontent.

 

 

"They just lost less badly"

 

cup half empty?? living on planet denial??

 

Im struggling to understand why you dont think the government doesnt have a mandate to make cuts on such a scale. they won the election. they made the "behind closed doors" deals which have allowed them to do these things with little or no resistance. and lets face it, we now actually have a PM who was voted in by the electorate which has got to be a good thing.

[Renton 22007]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

They just lost less badly. Quite an achievement too considering they had the full force of Murdoch on their side, and were campaigning against a hugely unpopular PM in the midst of the deepest recession in peace time history.

 

This is one of the things that really bugs me. I can accept there is a need for a coalition even if in reality it has minority support (not many Lib Dem supporters left now). But what I don't accept is that the government has the mandate to make such huge and brutal cuts, or to make such fundamental changes to the NHS (changes which were not even part of their manifesto). I would say that a coalition has a responsibility to be more measured in their actions than they have been so far, no wonder we are facing a winter of discontent.

 

 

We are facing a winter of discontent because of the wishes of several individuals such as the communist, Bob Crow. It is their decision to try and bring the country to its knees.

 

Its not like the poll tax where mass protests have taken place to unpopular government policy, this is a few extremely left wing old dinasoars wanting to change the country.

 

Very dark days ahead and once again it looks as though the Labour puppet masters are going to make us the sick man of europe.

 

Of course, even when they are not in Govenment, everything is Labour's fault.

[Renton 22007]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

"They just lost less badly". Quite an achievement too considering they had the full force of Murdoch on their side, and were campaigning against a hugely unpopular PM in the midst of the deepest recession in peace time history.

 

This is one of the things that really bugs me. I can accept there is a need for a coalition even if in reality it has minority support (not many Lib Dem supporters left now). But what I don't accept is that the government has the mandate to make such huge and brutal cuts, or to make such fundamental changes to the NHS (changes which were not even part of their manifesto). I would say that a coalition has a responsibility to be more measured in their actions than they have been so far, no wonder we are facing a winter of discontent.

 

 

"They just lost less badly"

 

cup half empty?? living on planet denial??

 

Im struggling to understand why you dont think the government doesnt have a mandate to make cuts on such a scale. they won the election. they made the "behind closed doors" deals which have allowed them to do these things with little or no resistance. and lets face it, we now actually have a PM who was voted in by the electorate which has got to be a good thing.

 

They didn't win a majority of votes, and didn't 'pass the post'. Cameron did not have the majority of support from the electorate - nowhere near in fact, despite all the factors in his favour. It was not inconcievable that Labour could have cobbled together a majority coalition. If that had happened, would you have agreed Labour had won?

 

I have said I agree that the coalition has a right to govern, just in my opinion they should take account that they are not a majority government and have measured policies to reflect this.

Edited September 14, 2010 by Renton

[Happy Face 29]

So democracy's ok when it suits.

 

Who'd have thought, the tory voters that got them in support the cuts being implemented that effect them least.

 

Not sure what's undemocratic about the people suffering the worst of the cuts not lying down and taking it up the arse.

[Dr Gloom 22182]

cameron was the only party leader with a mandate to govern, no matter how contrived. still an eton cunt

[ewerk 31221]

Oh CT, Labour may have lost the election but have you forgotten so did the tories?

 

 

no they didnt, they got the majority of the votes. hence they won.

 

(admitedly not by a sufficient margin to govern independently)

 

No they didn't, if you don't know the definition of the word 'majority' then maybe you shouldn't be talking with the big boys.

[NJS 4411]

At the moment Tory scum just think "benefit cheats" will be affected by the cuts - as it becomes apparent that it will effect them after all to some degree their tune will change.

 

Also CT a Union's whole raison d'etre is to protect and fight for its members jobs - surely that includes opposing cuts to those jobs?

[ewerk 31221]

Any potential sympathy I may have for the unions goes out the window when I see that cunt Bob Crow tbh.

[Renton 22007]

Any potential sympathy I may have for the unions goes out the window when I see that cunt Bob Crow tbh.

 

He is a cunt like, or should that be caaaaant.

[Meenzer 15731]

It's also noticeable that the tories are using the Lib Dems to front most of their unpopular decisions, I find it utterly bizarre how the Lib Dems have let this happen. I think Clegg will lose his seat next time and we will be back to a two party election, split along a North-South divide.

 

Rock and a hard place, I suppose - show any kind of reluctance to cooperate (even at the level of "we'll back your evil ploys, but would you please stop making Danny Alexander read them out to camera?") and you can be sure the Tory press would immediately spin it into "LIB DEMS HATE BRITAIN AND WANT YOUR GOVERNMENT TO FAIL". That said, I suspect you're right about their electoral prospects. And on a local level, Labour have every chance of getting back control of Newcastle council next time too.