Deadly December is shaping up to be as traumatic as the miners’ strike of 1984 and the winter of discontent of 1979.
Industrial action grips virtually every part of public service. Workers are up in arms. But there are big differences between this winter and those dramatic events of almost half a century ago. I know, I was there. Today’s Tory politicians were not.
These are not the same strikers. They are the sons and daughters – grandsons and grand-daughters – of workers in those momentous years.
Yet they have come to the same conclusion: the only way to cope with the cost-of-living crisis is to fight for better pay and greater job security.
Society has changed, too. Fewer workers have a trade union to go into battle with. The law makes it much harder to mount lawful industrial action. The media are more hostile.
Even the BBC effectively sides with the Government. How many times have you heard comfortably-off presenters bleat “but ministers would say...”
The Tories’ natural reaction to widespread discontent at work is classic thuggishness. Tighten the law against walk-outs. Bring in the army and scab agency labour. Smear strikers as allies of Putin.
Yet still they fight.
Prime Minister Sunak heads a zombie government that simply isn’t governing. He’s under relentless pressure to do something.
But instead of doing something to solve the wave of unrest, he threatens tough new laws to force rail workers, nurses and other emergency staff to work even if they vote to strike legally – a form of modern slavery.
This is not a time for half-measures. Instead of appeasing his swivel-eyed right-wing MPs, he should ask Sir Keir Starmer for help to settle the unrest before it gets totally out of hand.
Not a coalition government, not even an arrangement of parliamentary support like the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970s, but a national pact for peace, with decent, justifiable pay rises for public servants, funded by “sunset” tax increases on those most able to pay, individual and corporate.
As Sunak’s hero, Thatcher, would say “There is no alternative.”
We can’t go on like this. No trains. No ambulances. No nurses. No post. No driving tests. No universities. No buses. No teachers. No future.
The French fancied
Right from the start, the Old White Bear wise men said England would go out against France in the quarter-finals.
How they come to this conclusion is beyond me, but so far it’s proved more accurate than Mrs R who predicted our boys would be coming home after a week.
I tried to watch a World Cup game in the Commercial pub, Thurso, but the cabaret of cavorting locals was much more entertaining.
The women won on a penalty drink-out.
******
On a rail safari to Scotland I learned there’s a world shortage of men wanting to play Santa Claus. It’s especially acute north of the border, where only one candidate turned up to train as Mr Ho-ho-ho!
Evidently, it’s not “cool”. Incidentally, why do they have to be men? I’m sure women could do the job just as well.
I might even pay a visit to Mrs Grotto.
******
Megalomaniac tech billionaire Elon Musk plans the world’s first brain transplant. If I ever need one, please don’t give me his.
I’ll take Prince Harry’s, if the surgeon can find it. Never been used.
